Nobel Prize Laureate in Medicine

World distinguished biochemist Dr. Arthur Kornberg was born on March 3, 1918 in Brooklyn, New York. He is a 1941 graduate of the University of Rochester's School of Medicine and Dentistry. After serving as a doctor in the U.S. Coast Guard in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he returned to conduct research on biochemistry and, in particular, enzymes at the Nutrition Section of the National Institutes of Health. From 1953-1959, Kornberg was Professor and Head of the Department of Microbiology in the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, and from 1959 he was Professor and Executive Head of the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University of Medicine.

Soon after he joined the faculty of Stanford University in 1959, he received the Nobel Prize in Medicine (with Dr. Severo Ochoa of New York University) for their discoveries of the mechanisms of the biological synthesis of RNA and DNA. They were the first to identify polymerase I, the enzyme catalyzing the synthesis of DNA.

The special fields of interest of Dr. Kornberg are biochemistry, especially enzyme chemistry, and synthesis of DNA. He also studied the nucleic acids which control heredity in animals, plants, bacteria and viruses.

Dr. Kornberg has made significant contributions to our understanding of the mechanisms of inheritance and to the development of modern recombinant DNA technology. Many of the enzymes he isolated are the same ones used in today's sophisticated sequencing and cloning techniques.

Aside from being a Nobel laureate, Dr. Kornberg was also given the Paul-Lewis Laboratories Award in Enzyme Chemistry from the American Chemical Society in 1951, and an L.H.D. degree from Yeshiva University in 1962. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

In 1997, the Arthur Kornberg Research Awards were established to recognize faculty in the School of Medicine and Dentistry for excellence in biomedical research.

Source: http://www.the-scientist.com

" A scientist shouldn't be asked to judge the economic and moral value of his work. All we should ask the scientist to do is find the truth-and then not keep it from anyone." - Dr. Kornberg

• http://www.accessexcellence.org/
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• http://nobelprize.org/medicine/
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