Arthur Kornberg, Biochemist, Dies at 89

[Olney Blue]

Source: New York Times

Dr. Arthur Kornberg, a biochemist whose Nobel Prize-winning discovery of how DNA is assembled helped ignite the biotechnology revolution, died on Friday in Stanford, Calif. He was 89 and worked in his laboratory at Stanford University until a few days before his death. The cause was respiratory failure, a spokesman for Stanford said.

Dr. Kornberg was one of three Nobel Prize winners who were members of the extraordinary City College of New York class of 1937, including Dr. Herbert A. Hauptman and Dr. Jerome Karle.

Also, he was one of six Nobel laureates whose sons also won Nobel Prizes. In 2006, Roger D. Kornberg was the Nobel chemistry laureate for creating the first pictures of how genes convey messages so that cells can make proteins.

In 1959, Arthur Kornberg was awarded a Nobel Prize in medicine for the discovery of DNA polymerase, an enzyme needed to synthesize the master molecule of heredity.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/science/28kornberg.html?ref=us

[The Minus World]

1. Dr. Kornberg

The man lived a long and productive life, and contributed a great deal to man's understanding of biochemistry and the mechanisms by which life functions at the molecular level.

He contributed to the discovery of DNA polymerase, an enzyme which is critical for DNA replication. This is a large part of the central dogma of molecular biology, and to think that such a discovery was made only relatively recently on the human timeline is truly remarkable.

[question everything]

2. And a great scientist and a person he was

I was not aware of his passing until George Stephanopoulos mentioned him in passing in his "In Memorium" segment.

[The Straight Story]

3. I doubt he will get as much press coverage as Anna Nicole Smith

Our society is so screwed on some things...

[Javaman]

4. People who change the world for the better never get the press...

only those who change the world for the worse, grab the headlines.

the dumbing down of our society one stupid headline at a time.

read these last saying in my sigline: the jackassing of america