Marshall Nirenberg
1927-
Ph.D., 1957, University of Michigan
Biochemist. After leaving the U-M to join the National Institutes of Health, Nirenberg began a study involving in vitro protein synthesis. An intriguing question of the time involved the nature of the genetic code and how it determines the order of incorporation of the 20 different amino acids into the growing chain. Nirenberg and colleague Heinrich Matthei surprised the scientific world by answering those questions in 1961. Seven years later, Nirenberg shared the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Robert W. Holley and Har Gobind Khorana in recognition of their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.