Charles Kurland
Charles Gabriel Kurland is an American-born Swedish biochemist.
Kurland earned a doctorate in 1961 at Harvard University, advised by James D. Watson. Kurland accepted a postdoctoral research position at the Microbiology Institute of the University of Copenhagen, then joined the Uppsala University faculty in 1971. He retired from Uppsala in 2001, and was granted emeritus status. He was later affiliated with Lund University.
Research
Kurland's doctoral work dealt the structure of RNA, and continued with the discovery of messenger RNA, work that also involved François Gros, Walter Gilbert and James Watson. This was published simultaneously with the report by Sydney Brenner, François Jacob and Matthew Meselson of the same discovery. It was followed by numerous papers concerned with ribosomal proteinsIn the later part of his career Kurland has been interested in the origins of mitochondria and the tree of life.