Marshall W. Nirenberg
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Marshall W. Nirenberg
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1968
Born: 10 April 1927, New York, NY, USA
Died: 15 January 2010, New York, NY, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
Prize motivation: “for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis”
Prize share: 1/3
Work
In the 1950s, it was established that genetic information is transferred from DNA to RNA, to protein. One sequence of three nucleotides in DNA corresponds to a certain amino acid within a protein. How could this genetic code be cracked? Marshall Nirenberg and Heinrich Matthaei produced a long RNA chain consisting of a single nucleotide. When this resulted in a long chain of a single amino acid, the first part of the genetic code puzzle fell into place. The remainder of the code was mapped out in the years that followed.
Nobel Prizes and laureates
Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.
See them all presented here.
