NOBEL LAUREATES OF INDIA - Dr. Har Govind Khurana

  Let’s continue to discover the Nobel Laureates of India during the early 20th century. 

Dr. Har Govind Khurana

    Dr. Har Govind Khurana was born on January 9, 1922, in a small village called Raipur in Punjab (now in Pakistan) and was the youngest of five siblings. His father was a patwari, an agricultural taxation clerk in British India. 

Dr. HarGovind Khurana

    Khurana had his preliminary schooling at home. Later he joined the DAV High Multan High School. He graduated in Science from Punjab University, Lahore, in 1943 and went on to acquire his Master's degree in Science in 1945. He joined the University of Liverpool for his doctoral work and got his Doctorate in 1948. He did postdoctoral work in Switzerland's Federal Institute of Technology, where he met his Swiss wife Elizabeth Sibler. Later he took up a job at the British Columbia Research Council in Vancouver and continued his pioneering work on proteins and nucleic acids. 

    Khurana joined the University of Wisconsin in 1960, and 10 years later joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

    Dr. Khurana received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 along with M. W. Nienberg and R.W. Holley for the interpretation of the genetic code, its function, and protein synthesis. Till his death, he was the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Biology and Chemistry Emeritus at MIT. The Government of India honored him with Padma Vibhushan in 1969.

    

    He won numerous prestigious awards, including the Albert Laskar award for medical research, the National Medal of Science, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, etc. But he remained modest throughout his life and stayed away from the glare of publicity.

    On a note after winning the Nobel Prize, Dr. Khurana wrote: "Although poor, my father was dedicated to educating his children and we were practically the only literate family in the village inhabited by about 100 people." Following his father's footsteps, Dr. Khurana imparted education to thousands of students for more than half a century. He was more interested in the next project and experiments than cashing in on his frame. He was born in a poor family in a small village in Punjab, and by dint of sheer talent and tenacity rose to be one of science's immortals.

    Dr. Har Gobind Khurana died in a hospital in Concord, Massachusetts, on November 9, 2011.

(Excerpt from SCIENCE INDIA-The National Science Magazine, ISSN 0972-8287)

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-> Read on Nobel Laureate of India- Sri. Venkataraman Ramakrishnan 

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