Marshall Nirenberg Dies

Marshall Nirenberg, winner of the 1968 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine, has died, reports The Scientist. He was 82. Nirenberg shared the Nobel for his work on studying protein synthesis, namely for confirming the existence of mRNA and determining how codons specify what protein is formed. The Scientist points out that Nirenberg, as the head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics at the NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, was the first NIH scientist to win a Nobel prize. "He discovered common language used throughout the living matter from the simplest virus to the most complicated living matter, human being[s],” wrote Akira Kaji of the University of Pennsylvania and Hideko Kaji of Thomas Jefferson University to The Scientist.