GCU sets up research chair to honour Indian-American Nobel winner

LAHORE: Indian-American biochemist Har Gobind Khorana, who won the 1968 Nobel Prize for medicine, was on Thursday honoured by Government College University Lahore (GCU), which announced to set up a Research Chair in his name, foreign media reported.

"The GCU is going to set up a Research Chair at its chemistry department in the name of its alumni Professor Har Gobind Khorana," GCU vice-chancellor Professor Asghar Zaidi said.

Zaidi made the remarks while speaking at a ceremony held at the varsity on Thursday to celebrate the 98th birth anniversary of one of GCU's most eminent alumni.

Sharing the inspiring and fascinating story of Khorana, Zaidi said, "A child born in small Raipur village in Multan (now in Pakistan) in 1922 became the world's top biochemist and shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Medicine with Marshall W Nirenberg and Robert W Holley for research that showed the order of nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell and control the cell's synthesis of proteins."

He said the GCU has always been a mini-Pakistan where youth from different ethnic and religious backgrounds had studied together and excelled in different fields of life.

Later, Zaidi along with other academic and administrative heads cut Professor Khorana's birth anniversary cake.

Khorana who breathed his last in November 2011 had won the Nobel Prize in 1968 for unravelling the nucleotide sequence of RNA and deciphering the genetic code. He is known as a scientist who revolutionised biochemistry with his pioneering work in DNA chemistry.

Last year, the Punjab University in Lahore established a Baba Guru Nanak chair.