Physiology/Medicine: Har Gobind Khorana 1968 - Seattle, WA - Nobel Laureates on Waymarking.com

Located in the Pacific Science Museum, this Memorial is on a wall with about a dozen other similar ones honoring noted scientists in the field of genetics.
Along with photos of Khorana, the text of the Memorial reads:

"Born: Raipur, Punjab (now Pakistan)
birth certificate dated Jan. 9, 1922
(actual birth date not known)

B.S., Punjab University, 1943
M.S., Punjab University, 1945
Ph. D. University of Liverpool, 1948

Nobel Prize in Physiology
or Medicine, 1968

H. Gobind Khorana was the youngest of five children. Although the family was not well off, Khorana's father was dedicated to the childrens' education and his was practically the only literate family in the village of about 100 inhabitants.

After earning bachelor's and master's degrees at the Punjab University in Lahore, Khorana went to England to study for a Ph.D. at the University of Liverpool. After a postdoctoral year in Zurich, Switzerland, Khorana obtained a fellowship to work at Cambridge University where he stayed from 1950 to 1952. While at Cambridge, he developed an interest in proteins and nucleic acids (RNA and DNA).

From 1952 to 1960, Khorana worked at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he began his work on the synthesis of ribtrinucleitides, part of the cell's molecular machinery for making proteins from instructions in the genetic code. In 1960, Khornana moved to the Institute for Enzyme Research at the University of Wisconsin, where he continued his work on nucleitide synthesis and cracking the genetic code.

Khorana's research showed how the genetic components of the cell's nucleus control the synthesis of proteins from amino acids. He matched codons (three-based "words" in the genetic code) with amino acids using synthetic RNA. He found that each of the sixty-four possible codons corresponds with one of the twenty amino acids.

For his work in cracking the genetic code, H. Gobind Khorana shared the 1968 Nobel Prize in Phsiology or Medicine with Robert Holley and Marshall Nirenberg.

'While clarity in some of the detailed aspects of the genetic code is still lacking, it has been a most satisfying experience in the lives of many of us, who have worked on the problems, to see complete agreement reached, in regard to its general structure.'
- Khorana from his Nobel lecture december 12, 1968."

Field of Accomplishment: Physiology/Medicine Year of Award: 1968 Primary Relevant Web Site: [Web Link] Secondary Relevant Web Site: [Web Link]

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