United States biochemist Arthur Kornberg, who won a Nobel Prize for shedding light on the construction of human DNA, died on October 26 at the age of 89, Stanford University said.
“Dr Kornberg was one of the most distinguished and remarkable scientists in American medicine,” the head of the California university’s medical school, Philip Pizzo, said in a statement.
Kornberg, a professor of biochemistry, won the 1959 Nobel Prize for synthesizing DNA — the genetic material that determines human heredity — in a test tube. He won the prize jointly with the Spanish scientist Severo Ochoa.
He helped discover enzymes that form the building blocks of human genetic make-up, paving the way for the development of genetic engineering and drugs for treating cancer and infections.
“Kornberg discovered the actual chemical mechanism by which the huge amount of DNA that comprises a chromosome gets constructed in the cell,” the university statement said.
He died at the university hospital of respiratory failure.
“His towering contributions have continued virtually up until the time of his death. Without doubt, his legacy will certainly live on for many, many generations to come,” Pizzo said.
“He was an extraordinary scientist,” said Paul Berg, a professor of cancer research at the university who won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, also for DNA work.
“His accomplishments might be called legendary. The style in which he did his science was inspirational,” the university statement quoted Berg as saying.
Arthur Kornberg’s son Roger won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2006. — AFP