Kjell Kleppe (1934-1988) was a

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

biochemist and molecular biologist who was a pioneer in the PCR technique and built the first laboratory in the country for bio and gene technology. Kjell Kleppe earned a B.S. degree from the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...

(1955-1958) and a Ph.D. in enzymology from the

University of Nebraska A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, ...

, USA (1958-1963). Kleppe conducted research at many prestigious universities, including

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and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and in 1966, he joined the

University of Bergen The University of Bergen ( no, Universitetet i Bergen, ) is a research-intensive state university located in Bergen, Norway. As of 2019, the university has over 4,000 employees and 18,000 students. It was established by an act of parliament in 194 ...

, where he founded Felleslaboratorium for bioteknologi (FLB), the first gene technology laboratory in Norway with Professor Curt Endresen. He became a member of the

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(EMBO) and

Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters The Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters ( da, Det Kongelige Norske Videnskabers Selskab, DKNVS) is a Norwegian learned society based in Trondheim. It was founded in 1760 and is Norway's oldest scientific and scholarly institution. The ...

(DKNVS) in 1984. During his postdoctoral career in the United States, he put forward the idea of the

polymerase chain reaction The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a method widely used to rapidly make millions to billions of copies (complete or partial) of a specific DNA sample, allowing scientists to take a very small sample of DNA and amplify it (or a part of it) ...

(PCR). Kleppe discovered the concepts for PCR while working in the laboratory of 1968

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winner,

Har Gobind Khorana Har Gobind Khorana (9 January 1922 – 9 November 2011) was an Indian American biochemist. While on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and ...

at the

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. Two years after he published the founding principles of PCR, Kleppe and Khorana published a "process called repair replication for synthesizing short DNA duplexes and single-stranded DNA by polymerases." Because of his initial discoveries and ideas, PCR can now be applied to forensics, genetics, and diagnostics. Recently, its most notable use is in connection to

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diagnostics, as it is able to identify bacteria and viruses.

References

1934 births 1988 deaths Norwegian biochemists Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters {{biologist-stub