Nobel Prize Recipient. Dr. Har Gobind Khorana was honored in 1968 with the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for helping to unlock the RNA genetic code. Raised as part of the only literate family in the Pakistan village of Raipur, he showed academic promise from a young age, receiving his undergraduate degree from Punjab University in 1943 and his master's from the same school in 1945. He earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in England from Liverpool University in 1948 and after work in Switzerland and England settled at Vancouver's British Columbia Research Council in 1952. There he developed new methods of synthesizing nucleotides, specifically coenzyme A which is involved in converting fats to energy. In 1960 he moved to the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Enzyme Research where he did the work that led to his Nobel Prize. Dr. Khorana demonstrated that the code by which RNA transmits genetic instruction for the manufacture of DNA is made up of 64 distinct three letter combinations of adenine, cytosine, guanine, and uracil (A,C,G,U); he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1968, sharing with Robert Holley of California Institute of Technology and Marshall Nirenberg of National Institute of Health, who had performed research in the same field. He became an American citizen in 1966, then in 1970 transferred to Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was to spend the remainder of his career. In Boston he created the first artificial gene in 1976 while over the years running a laboratory that turned out numerous topflight researchers including 1993 Nobel laureate Michael Smith. Active well into advanced age, Dr. Khorana did not retire until 2007. In addition to the Nobel Prize, his list of honors was long and included a 1968 Lasker Award and a 1987 National Medal of Science.