Indian-American Nobel laureate Har Gobind Khorana dies in the US

Har Gobind Khorana, Nobel laureate, and pioneering Indian-American biochemist, died on Wednesday in the US, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was professor emeritus, announced on Monday. He was 89.

Born in Raipur, a small village in Punjab (now in Pakistan), Khorana is survived by his daughter Julia and son Dave. Khorana, who was MIT's Alfred P. Sloan professor biology and chemistry emeritus, won the 1968 Nobel Prize for Medicine, along with Robert W. Holley of Cornell University and Marshall W. Nirenberg of the National Institutes of Health.

Working independently, they unravelled the nucleotide sequence of RNA, a chemical in cells that translate genetic information in DNA. The three scientists showed how genetic information is translated into proteins.

''Gobind was a brilliant, path-breaking scientist, a wise and considerate colleague, and a dear friend to many of us at MIT,'' said Chris Kaiser, MacVicar professor of biology and head of the department of biology, while announcing the death by natural causes of the renowned scientist in Concord.

The youngest of five children, Khorana was born in an impoverished family. His father, however, was keen that his children get the best of education. He won a government scholarship to study science at the Punjab University in Lahore, from where he graduated in chemistry in 1943. He also did his master's in chemistry and won a government fellowship that took him to the University of Liverpool in England.

Khorana earned a doctorate in organic chemistry in 1948 and then went to Zurich for post-doctoral studies. He then spent two years at the University of Cambridge, before heading to the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in 1952.