Har Gobind Khorana (January 9, 1922 – November 9, 2011) was a biochemist who shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley 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. Khorana`s work is an important scientific landmark of the 20th Century. It has brought closer the day, when synthetic DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) may be introduced into 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 (Ribonucleic acid), capable of replication in laboratory, is a step towards the creation of life artificially.

By Ritu Singh and Shruti Saxena