Har Gobind Khorana (1922–2011) Pioneering Spirit 英文参考文献.docVIP

Obituary HarGobindKhorana(1922–2011):PioneeringSpirit ThomasP.Sakmar* LaboratoryofMolecularBiologyandBiochemistry,TheRockefellerUniversity,NewYork,NewYork,UnitedStatesofAmerica One of the great chemists of the 20th century died on November 9, 2011. H. Gobind Khorana, a founder of what we nowcallchemicalbiologyandapioneerat thedawnoftheageofmolecularbiology, was89(seeImage1). analysis by Arthur Kornberg—a test to confirm the sequence of the bases during replication—was all that Gobind needed to commit to the work [1]. And once Gobind committed, there was no turning back—ever. Gobind was a creative and insightful chemist, with many landmark achieve- ments to his credit, including the first By the time I had met Gobind for the firsttime,attheMassachusettsInstituteof Technology (MIT) in 1984, he was 62 yearsold—alreadyagiantfromanearlier time.Hegavenoimpressionatthatinitial meeting that he was satisfied with his achievements or finished with his work. Andinfact,hewasn’t.Hewouldbeactive for 23 years more and would publish seminalworkontransmembranesignaling andenergytransduction. practical synthesis of nucleotides and coenzymes in the mid-1950s. He had a pioneeringsenseofthepowerofmultidis- ciplinary work and he continued to re- inventhimselfatregularintervalsformore than50years. Heshared theNobelPrizefor Physiol- ogyorMedicinein1968(withRobertW. Holley and Marshall W. Nirenberg), at age46,forcontributionstowardelucidat- ing the genetic code—one of the great scientific achievements of the age of I remember vividly that first meeting, andIguessthatanyonewhohasevermet Gobind would remember him. He was not necessarily what you would expect given his achievements. He seemed to have time; he listened and had no air of pretense at all. He was a professor who did not profess; an expert who did not claim to know all there was to know. He preferred to be on the receiving end, to acquire more information to store, syn- thesize, and later recall using his prodi- gious memory.