born Jan. 9, 1922, Raipur, India
Indian-born U.S. biochemist.
He received his Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool and later taught in Canada and the U.S., from 1970 at MIT. He shared a 1968 Nobel Prize with Marshall Warren Nirenberg and Robert William Holley for research that helped show how the genetic components of the cell nucleus control the synthesis of proteins. His contribution was to synthesize small nucleic acid molecules whose exact structure was known. Combined with the proper materials, his synthetic nucleic acids caused protein synthesis, just as in the cell; comparing these proteins with the nucleic acid showed which portions of the nucleic acid were the codes for each part of the protein. In 1970 he prepared the first artificial copy of a yeast gene.