Lasting Memories

Arthur Kornberg
1918-Oct. 26, 2007
Portola Valley, California

Arthur Kornberg, 89, winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize for medicine, died Oct. 26 of respiratory failure. He was professor emeritus of medicine at Stanford and a resident of Portola Valley.

He was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. He earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry and biology from City College of New York in 1937 and his medical degree from the University of Rochester in 1941.

He worked at the National Institutes of Health from 1942 to 1953 and then taught at Washington University in St. Louis. He came to Stanford in 1959 as chair of the new Department of Biochemistry.

He shared the 1959 Nobel Prize for his test-tube synthesis of DNA. Although James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the model of how DNA is replicated, Kornberg discovered the actual chemical model of how DNA gets constructed in a human cell.

He liked to refer to his scientific career as a "love affair with enzymes."

He authored several books, including "Germ Stories," a children's book due to be published Nov. 15.

One of his sons, Roger Kornberg, shared his father's love of science. A professor of structural biology at Stanford, Roger won the 2006 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

He is survived by his wife, Carolyn Frey Dixon Kornberg of Portola Valley, whom he married in 1998. He was previously married to Charlene Walsh Levering Kornberg, who died in 1995.

He is also survived by sons, Roger, a Stanford professor, Thomas, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, Kenneth, an architect and founder of Kornberg Associates; and eight grandchildren.