Nobel prize in chemistry to Berg, Gilbert and Sanger

The 1980 Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded last month to Paul Berg (Stanford University), Walter Gilbert (Harvard University) and Frederick Sanger (Cambridge University), for their work on the biochemistry of DNA. Half of the $210 000 chemistry prize was awarded to Berg for “his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acid, with particular regard to recombinant DNA.” The other half of the prize is shared between Gilbert and Sanger “for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids.”