Arthur Kornberg, winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize for his discovery of the enzymes which make DNA will deliver the Peter Garland Lecture at the University of Dundee on Tuesday 8 May at 1pm. Professor of biochemistry at the University of Stanford California, he built up the best biochemistry department in the USA on the back of his discovery.
The Peter Garland Lecture was set up in 1985 to mark the achievement of Dundee's first Professor of Biochemistry in building up the department into one of the strongest in the UK over the period 1970 to 1984. Peter will be at the University to hear the lecture.
Born in New York in 1918, Arthur Kornberg obtained a Batchelor of Science degree from the City College of New York in 1937 and an MD from the University of Rochester in 1941. From 1947-1953 he was Chief of the Enzyme and Metabolism Section of the National Institutes of Health before becoming Head of the Department of Microbiology at Washington University, St Louis. In 1959, he founded the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University where he has worked ever since.
Although now 83, he still runs a research group of 10, whose major interest over the past 10 years has been to understand the role of inorganic polyphosphate (poly P). Arthur Kornberg's lecture will be a mixture of scientific reflections, his recent research in poly P and his views on the increasing role of scientists in business. He is a founder and member of the Scientific Board of DNAX, now a Division of the Schering-Plough Corporation.
The lecture will take place in the large lecture theatre of the medical sciences institute at 1pm on Tuesday 8 May. The lecture is free and open to the public.ENDS