Punjab University alumnus, Hargobind Khorana, the biochemist who received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine passed away in Concord, Massachusetts, US, on November 9. He was 89. His daughter Julia and son Dave survive him. Khorana was born in Raipur village of West Punjab and did his BSc from Punjab University, Lahore, in 1943, and MSc also from the same university in 1945.

Khorana was awarded the Government of India Fellowship that enabled him to go to England where he studied for his PhD at the University of Liverpool.

In 1970, Khorana became the Alfred Sloan Professor of Biology and Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked until his retirement in 2007.

He left the Punjab around Independence, first to the UK, then Switzerland - where he met and married Esther Elizabeth Sibler, and then to Canada and the US.

"Gobind was a brilliant, path-breaking scientist, a wise and considerate colleague, and a dear friend to many of us at MIT," said Chris Kaiser, head of the Department of Biology, in an email announcing the news to his department.

"Khorana was among the pioneers of the now-familiar series of three-nucleotide codons that signal to the cell which amino acids to use in building proteins - for example, uracil-cytosine-uracil, or UCU, codes for the amino acid serine, while CUC codes for leucine," said MIT News.

Shortly after arriving at the Institute, Khorana - along with colleagues - announced the synthesis of two different genes crucial to protein building.

And in a major breakthrough in 1976, they completed the synthesis of the first fully functional manmade gene in a living cell, said MIT News.

Marshall W Nirenberg and Robert W Holley for research that helped to show how nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell, control the cell's synthesis of proteins.

Along with the Nobel, he also received the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize and the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research.

The other Punjab University alumnus to have received the Nobel Prize was Abdus Salaam.