A forgotten Scientist in India Dr. Hargobind Khorana

Dr. Hargobind Khorana  -Everyone has mugged up this name in childhood but nobody went into details. For all the Indians this name was just a part of general knowledge question bank and never came out of that. Even many of us did not know that he was alive or dead before his death news at November 9, 2011.

Dr. Hargobind Khorana got the Nobel Prize in the field of Medicine or Physiology (shared with R. W. Holley and M. Nirenberg) in 1968 at the age of 45 for research that helped to show how the nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell, control the cell's synthesis of proteins.

Actually this is our old tradition that whenever world recognized any Indian then only we recognized that person. Not to name but our history is full of such instances. This is surprising that Dr. Hargobind Khorana who became the head of organic department of research council at University of British Columbia in 1952, when he came back to India before getting noble prize dint gets suitable better options for research work and went back to US. This was one of the heart-rending examples of Brain Drain. India has given him Padma Vibhushan, highest Presidential Award in 1969 after achieving Noble Prize.

He continued his research work after getting Noble Prize and discovered the process of linking the pieces of DNA together using polymerase and ligase enzymes to form the first synthetic gene. This discovery was such an important and given new directions to modern genetic engineering that he could have got again Noble Prize for this. These custom-designed pieces of artificial genes are widely used in biology labs for sequencing, cloning and engineering new plants and animals.

A brief biography:

He was born at Raipur Panjab on January 9th 1922 in Sikh family. He got his BSc in 1943 and MSc in 1945 from Punjab University, Lahore in 1943. After achieving Government of India Fellowship in 1945 Dr. Hargobind Khorana went foreign for his Phd at University of Liverpool.

Important Awards:

•Merck Award from Chemical Institute of Canada;
•Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology (shared with R. W. Holley and M. Nirenberg);
•American Academy of Achievement Award, Philadelphia, PA;
•Padma Vibhushan Presidential Award, India;
•J. C. Bose Medal, Bose Institute, Calcutta, India;
•Willard Gibbs Medal of the Chicago Section of the Amer. Chem. Society;
•National Medal of Science;
•M.I.T. School of Science Distinguished Service Award.
Dr. Hargobind Khorana died on November 9, 2011 in Concord, Massachusetts at the aged 89.

http://www.freepressjournal.in/news/31406-nobel-winner-hg-khorana-passes-away.html