Har Gobind Khorana Google doodle celebrates first chemist to construct a synthetic gene

Google is marking what would have been Har Gobind Khorana’s 96th birthday with a doodle to celebrate the Nobel Prize winner’s accomplishments in the field of biochemistry.

Born in Raipur, Pakistan, on this date in 1922, Dr. Khorana was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 while researching nucleotides at the University of Wisconsin. He and a team of researchers received the award after discovering how the order of nucleotides in our DNA determines which amino acids are built and in turn, form the proteins that carry out cell functions.

“Dr. Khorana made a second scientific breakthrough when he constructed the first synthetic gene,” writes Google on its Google Doodle blog. “He received a host of awards during his lifetime, including the National Medal of Science.”

According to Google, Dr. Khorana was the youngest of five children and was taught to read and write by his father.

“Scholarships helped propel the budding scientist through his scholastic journey, obtaining his doctorate in organic chemistry in 1948,” writes Google.

To create today’s doodle, Google recruited Bangalore-based artist, Rohan Dahotre. The image leads to a search for “Har Gobind Khorana” and includes the usual sharing icon to post the doodle on social pages or send via email.

Google included the following early sketches from Dahotre in their post about Dr. Khorana:

Here is the final doodle Google has posted on its home page in the US and a handful of other countries, including India, Japan, Australia, Sweden, Peru, Argentina and Chile:

Interestingly, the final doodle did not have the word “Google” within the image as most doodles do, even though the initial sketches included it.