The Biochemistry Addition’s auditorium will be named in honor of Har Gobind Khorana during a dedication ceremony on Thursday, July 30th at 4 p.m. The ceremony will take place in the Biochemistry Addition’s atrium, and all members of the university community are invited to attend.

Khorana, a Nobel laureate, will be present at the ceremony to accept this honor.

Khorana was a faculty member in the UW-Madison’s biochemistry department from 1960-1970. While here, he helped crack the genetic code, completing a set of experiments that garnered him a Nobel Prize in 1968. Shortly thereafter, he went on to synthesize the first artificial gene.

Khorana will be on campus at the end of July to participate in the biochemistry department’s 33rd annual Steenbock Symposium, titled “Synthetic Genes to Synthetic Life: On the Exploration and Synthesis of Biological Systems,” which is designed to highlight the significance and legacy of Khorana’s groundbreaking work.

Khorana’s research paved the way for scientists who are currently trying to assemble entire artificial genomes from basic chemical building blocks—essentially creating life from scratch.