A chemist built the first entirely artificial gene from scratch

Har Gobind Khorana shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for helping crack the genetic code — working out that each three-letter 'codon' of DNA spells a specific amino acid. Four years later he went further, chemically stitching together the first wholly synthetic gene, a feat that helped found modern genetic engineering.

— Har Gobind Khorana, Total synthesis of a gene — Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1968; gene synthesis, 1972