Dr. Hargovind Khorana was born on 9 January 1922 at Raipur, Punjab (now in Pakistan).
He obtained his M.Sc. Honours in Organic Chemistry from the Punjab University in 1945 and later received his Ph. D. from the University of Liverpool in England.
The most fruitful and creative decade of Dr. Khorana’s career began in 1960 when he joined the University of Wisconsin as Professor and co-Director of the Institute of Enzyme Research and Professor of Biochemistry (1962-70). In 1970 he was appointed Professor of Biology and Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA.
He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Washington as well as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1971 he became a foreign member of USSR Academy of Sciences and in 1974 an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Chemical Society.
He won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1968 sharing it with M.W. Nuremberg and R.W. Holley for interpreting the genetic code and analysing its function in protein synthesis.
The other awards conferred on him include Distinguished Service Awards. Watumull Foundation, Honolulu, Hawaii (1968); American Academy of Achievement Award, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1971); Padma Vibushan, (1972); J.C.Bose Medal, Bose Institute, Calcutta (1972) and Willard Gibbs medal of the Chicago Section of American Chemical Society (1973-74).
His researches embrace many fields and have gone a long way in answering one of the most critical and controversial issues of biology, i.e., the role of heredity and environment. His work, which is an important scientific landmark of the twentieth century, has brought closer the day when synthetic DNA may be introduced into the defective human tissues to bring about their repair or treat mentally retarded people and change them into more intelligent and healthy human beings. His synthesis of RNA, capable of replication in laboratory, is a step towards the creation of life artificially.
