Think of DNA and the names that come to mind are Crick and Watson. But as Portugal, co-author of the classic A Century of DNA reminds us in this study of the biochemist Marshall Nirenberg (1927-2010), many others were involved in cracking the code of the double helix. Nirenberg, an NIH researcher, made key discoveries about DNA in 1961, and won the Nobel in 1968. Dr. Portugal, a former colleague of Nirenberg’s and now a clinical associate professor of biology at Catholic and director of the University’s M.S. in biotechnology program, draws on interviews and a wide range of archival documents, including Nirenberg’s lab notebooks, to tell the story of this pioneering scientist.
