Today on Google's home page is a special Google Doodle, logo, for the noble prize winner, Indian American biochemist who was the first to demonstrate the role of nucleotides in protein synthesis, Har Gobind Khorana.
Har Gobind Khorana was born on January 9, 1922 in Raipur, Pakistan and died on November 9, 2011, Concord, Massachusetts at the age of 89. Throughout his professional career he has won many awards including:
- Nobel Prize in Medicine (1968)
- Gairdner Foundation International Award (1980)
- Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize
- ForMemRS (1978)
- Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research
- Padma Vibhushan
- Willard Gibbs Award (1974)
Google wrote:
Dr. Khorana was born in 1922 as the youngest of five children. His father instilled the importance of learning by helping his children to read and write, which wasn’t common for villagers at the time. Scholarships helped propel the budding scientist through his scholastic journey, obtaining his doctorate in organic chemistry in 1948.Dr. Khorana conducted research at universities in England, Switzerland, and Canada, and it was at the University of Wisconsin that he and two fellow researchers received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968. Together, they discovered that the order of nucleotides in our DNA determines which amino acids are built. These amino acids form proteins, which carry out essential cell functions.
His accomplishments didn’t stop there. Fewer than five years later, Dr. Khorana made a second scientific breakthrough when he constructed the first synthetic gene. He received a host of awards during his lifetime, including the National Medal of Science.
The Doodler on this Google Doodle was Rohan Dahotre.
Forum discussion at Google+.
