Gobind Khorana (1922 - 2011)

 

Har Gobind (Hargobind) Khorana was a biochemist specializing in polynucleotide synthesis. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 along with Robert Holley and Marshall Nirenberg "for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis."

Khorana was born in Raipur, Pujab, British India (now Pakistan) in 1922. After graduating from Punjab University in Lahore (British India) he went to the University of Liverpool (United Kingdom) to complete a Ph.D. Following several post-docs in Zurich (Switzerland) and Cambridge (UK) he accepted a job at the British Columbia Research Council, in Vancouver, Canada in 1952.

According to his colleague, Uttam Rajbhandary,

Gobind was so excited that he was going to start a lab of his own. He looked at the map of Canada, saw where Vancouver was for the first time, and off he went ...

In 1960 he moved to the University of Wisconsin, Madison (United States) and in 1970 he moved again, this time to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston (United States). Gobind Khorana died in Concord, Massachusetts on Wednesday, November 9, 2011.

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