Severo Ochoa

Severo Ochoa (1905-1993), Spanish-American biochemist and Nobel laureate, who in 1955 became the first person to synthesize a nucleic acid. Nucleic acids are extremely large, complex molecules that exist in all living cells and control heredity. Ochoa was born in Luarca, Spain, and educated at the University of Madrid. After graduate work in Glasgow, Berlin, and Heidelberg, he taught at the universities of Madrid, Heidelberg, and Oxford. In 1940 he settled in the United States, becoming a citizen in 1956. Ochoa joined the faculty of the College of Medicine of New York University in 1942; in 1954 he was named chairman of the department of biochemistry. He shared the 1959 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with the American biochemist Arthur Kornberg; Ochoa was honored for research on ribonucleic acid (RNA), Kornberg for research on deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).