The Least likely man

The genetic code is the Rosetta Stone by which we interpret the 3.3 billion letters of human DNA, the alphabet of life. In 1968, Marshall Nirenberg, an unassuming government scientist working at the National Institutes of Health, shared the Nobel Prize for cracking the genetic code. A quiet, unassuming scientist, he did not have a particularly brilliant undergraduate or graduate career. He was exploring how cells make protein when he had his breakthrough. In later years he moved on to the next frontier of biological research: how the brain works.