Arthur Kornberg

The pioneering biochemist Arthur Kornberg (1918 - 2007) was awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering the means by which DNA molecules are duplicated in the bacterial cell -- landmark research that helped advance our understanding of the hereditary process. He was also honored for devising the procedure for reconstructing this duplication process in the test tube. Dr. Kornberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, and educated in the city's public schools. He received his undergraduate degree in science from the City College of New York, and a medical degree from the University of Rochester in 1941. A commissioned officer in the U.S. Public Health Service, he was assigned to the Navy as a ship's doctor during World War II. Following the war, he was posted to the National Institutes of Health, where he organized and directed the program in enzyme research. After leaving NIH, he chaired the department of microbiology at Washington University in St. Louis. In 1959, the same year he received the Nobel Pr