NRI Nobel Laureates
Har Gobind Khorana - Born
January 9, 1922 - Raipur, India
Indian-born American biochemist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology
or Medicine in 1968 with Marshal W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for
research that helped to show how the genetic components of the cell nucleus
control the synthesis of proteins. Khorana was born into a poor family
and attended Punjab University at Lahore and University of Liverpool,
England, on government scholarships. He obtained his Ph.D. at Liverpool
in 1948. In 1971, he joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
- Born October 19, 1910 - Lahore, India (now part of
Pakistan) Three Indian citizens have won the Nobel Prize: Rabindranath Tagore
(1913 - Literature) for his work titled “Gitanjali”; Sir Chandrasekhara
V. Raman (1930 - Physics) for the discovery that when light traverses
a transparent material, some of the light changes in wavelength; and Mother
Teresa (1979 - Peace) for helping thousands in and around Calcutta
through her congregation, Missionaries of Charity. Born to Albanian parents
in Yugoslavia, she became an Indian Citizen in 1948.
Indian-born American astrophysicist who, with William A. Fowler, won the
1983 Nobel Prize for Physics by formulating the currently accepted theory
on the later evolutionary stages of massive stars. Chandrasekhar joined
the staff of the University of Chicago in 1938 and became a U.S. citizen
in 1953. Besides doing work on energy transfer by radiation in stellar atmospheres
and convention on the solar surface, he also attempted to develop the mathematical
theory of black holes.