American biochemist Arthur Kornberg, who isolated the first DNA polymerizing enzyme, has died. Kornberg, 89, still maintained an active research laboratory at Stanford, and regularly published peer reviewed scientific papers.  Kornberg is survived by his third wife, Carolyn Frey Dixon Kornberg, whom he married in 1998.

"Dr. Kornberg was one of the most distinguished and remarkable scientists in American medicine," said Philip Pizzo, MD, dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine. "His towering contributions have continued virtually up until the time of his death. Without doubt, his legacy will certainly live on for many, many generations to come."

James Dewey Watson, recently caught in a race row, and Francis Crick had put forward a formal model of how DNA is replicated in the early ’50s, which earned them a Nobel Prize as well. However, Prof. Kornberg discovered the actual chemical mechanism by which the huge amount of DNA that comprises a chromosome gets constructed in the cell.

"There have got to be tens of thousands of people around the world today whose eyes are tearing up with the news that he’s gone," said Paul Berg, PhD, the Robert W. and Vivian K. Cahill Professor of Cancer Research Emeritus and winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with recombinant DNA. "He was an extraordinary scientist. His accomplishments might be called legendary. The style in which he did his science was inspirational."

Arthur Kornberg was one of only six Nobel laureates whose sons also won Nobel Prizes, as his son Roger D. Kornberg was the 2006 Nobel chemistry laureate for continuing on the same line of work as his father. Roger Kornberg is credited for creating the first pictures of how genes convey messages so that cells can make proteins.

Mocked by one of the reviewers, Kornberg's first two papers for the Journal of Biological Chemistry were initially rejected. However, a new editor, Dr. John Edsall, took over the Journal and reversed the ruling by his predecessor. Only a year later, Kornberg won the Nobel Prize for his work. He also failed to receive grants early in his career because of his Jewish roots, he alleged.

"No matter how counterintuitive it may seem, basic research has proven over and over to be the lifeline of practical advances in medicine," Kornberg said in a 1977 publication. "Without advances, medicine regresses and reverts to witchcraft."