The First Nobel Laureate in Biology to Get the Unique Award from the Subcontinent Passes Away

Dr. H. Gobind Khorana, the Nobel Laureate died of natural causes in Concord, Massachusetts last month on November 9 at the age of 89. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley. For the first time he and his team succeeded in synthesizing a synthetic gene consisting of 77 nitrogenous .

bases. It was double stranded helical like the natural DNA. It was neither seen replicating nor found to synthesize the alanine t-RNA. Finally the molecular biologists were able to activate it when the necessary components of the gene were supplied. Now with sophisticated equipments a gene can be sequenced, synthesized, replicate and function. The present generation of mol. Biologists does not realize how difficult it was to synthesize a gene and made to work only forty years ago. GNOBB has the pleasure of reproducing a letter from Dr. Autar Mattoo (written to Prof. Zeba Seraj) in appreciation of the great qualities of the Nobel Laureate. The purpose of reproducing this letter is to enumerate qualities of great men which the present generation of scientists may like to emulate in order to achieve success in their scientific career.