The scientist who wasn't awarded with Nobel Prize: Dr. Cyril Ponnamperuma of Sri Lanka

Dr. Cyril Ponnamperuma (1923 - 1995) was born in Galle, Southern Capital of Sri Lanka. He received his doctorate in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1962 under the direction of the Nobel Laureate Professor Melvin Calvin. His laboratory studies were focused mainly towards the origin of life and it was only when he was selected as a principal investigator for analysis of the moon dust collected in the Apollo Programs that his name and photo appeared on the cover-pages of prestigious world class newspapers and magazines such as The Time and Newsweek. He was one of the dicoverers of DNA with Francis Crick et James Watson, and one of the main writers on the panspermia theory. With Francis Crick, he tended to the thesis that prebiotic complex molecule form in space rather than of the surface of planets, and get hosted later within protective cells naturally found in planets water. In 1965, as research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, he discovered striking evidence that the independently developed biochemistry on any more or less earth-like planet anywhere would be the same or at least highly similar than that on the Earth. He duplicated the postulated conditions of the primeval earth, and found out that the common and important constituents of life such as amino acids, purines, sugars, etc., tend to appear in the system, while highly exotic substances do not. The discovery was published in the Proceedings of the Conference on the Exploration of Mars and Venus, Blacksburg, Virginia, 1965. He later was the head of the Exobiology division at NASA's Ames Center.