Arthur Kornberg

Biologist

Arthur Kornberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, United States on March 3rd, 1918 and is the Biologist. At the age of 89, Arthur Kornberg biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.

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Date of Birth
March 3, 1918
Nationality
United States
Place of Birth
Brooklyn, New York, United States
Death Date
Oct 26, 2007 (age 89)
Zodiac Sign
Pisces
Profession
Academic, Biochemist, Chemist, Non-fiction Writer, Physician, University Teacher
Arthur Kornberg Height, Weight, Eye Color and Hair Color

At 89 years old, Arthur Kornberg physical status not available right now. We will update Arthur Kornberg's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Height
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Weight
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Hair Color
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Arthur Kornberg Religion, Education, and Hobbies
Religion
Not Available
Hobbies
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Education
City College of New York, University of Rochester
Arthur Kornberg Spouse(s), Children, Affair, Parents, and Family
Spouse(s)
Sylvy Ruth Levy (1943–1986; her death; 3 children), Charlene Walsh Levering (1988–1995; her death), Carolyn Frey Dixon (1998–2007; his death)
Children
Not Available
Dating / Affair
Not Available
Parents
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Arthur Kornberg Career

The feeding of rats was boring work, and Kornberg became fascinated by enzymes. He transferred to Dr Severo Ochoa's laboratory at New York University in 1946, and took summer courses at Columbia University to fill out the gaps in his knowledge of organic and physical chemistry while learning the techniques of enzyme purification at work. He became Chief of the Enzyme and Metabolism Section at NIH from 1947–1953, working on understanding of ATP production from NAD and NADP. This led to his work on how DNA is built up from simpler molecules.

While working at NIH, he also researched at Washington University in St. Louis (in the lab of Carl Ferdinand Cori and Gerty Cori in 1947), and the University of California, Berkeley (in the lab of Horace Barker in 1951).

In 1953 he became Professor and Head of the Department of Microbiology, Washington University in St. Louis, until 1959. Here he continued experimenting with the enzymes which created DNA. In 1956 he isolated the first DNA polymerizing enzyme, now known as DNA polymerase I. This won him the Nobel prize in 1959.

In 1960 he received a LL.D. again from City College, followed by a D.Sc. at the University of Rochester in 1962. He became Professor and Executive Head of the Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University, in 1959. In an interview in 1997, Arthur Kornberg (referring to Josh Lederberg) said: "Lederberg really wanted to join my department. I knew him; he's a genius, but he'd be unable to focus and to operate within a small family group like ours, and so, I was instrumental in establishing a department of genetics [at Stanford] of which he would be chairman."

Kornberg's mother died of gas gangrene from a spore infection after a routine gall bladder operation in 1939. This started his lifelong fascination with spores, and he devoted some of his research efforts to understanding them while at Washington University. From 1962 to 1970, in the midst of his work on DNA synthesis, Kornberg devoted half his research effort to determining how DNA is stored in the spore, what replication mechanisms are included, and how the spore generates a new cell. This was an unfashionable but complex area of science, and although some progress was made, eventually Kornberg abandoned this research.

The Arthur Kornberg Medical Research Building at the University of Rochester Medical Center was named in his honor in 1999.

Until his death, Kornberg maintained an active research laboratory at Stanford and regularly published peer reviewed scientific journal articles. For several years the focus of his research was the metabolism of inorganic polyphosphate.

The "Kornberg school" of biochemistry refers to Arthur Kornberg's many graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, i.e., his intellectual children, and the trainees of his trainees, i.e., his intellectual grandchildren. Kornberg's intellectual children include I. Robert Lehman, Charles C. Richardson, Randy Schekman, William T. Wickner, James Rothman, Arturo Falaschi and Ken-ichi Arai.

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