[2] He shared a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 with Har Gobind Khorana and Robert W. Holley for "breaking the genetic code" and describing how it operates in protein synthesis.

In the same year, together with Har Gobind Khorana, he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University.

He received his PhD in biochemistry from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1957, studying hexose uptake in tumor cells with his advisor James F.

He was married in 1961 to Perola Zaltzman, a chemist from the University of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, who also worked at NIH and died in 2001.

Nirenberg married Myrna Weissman, PhD, Professor of Epidemiology and Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2005.

[8] In 1986, Nirenberg's achievements and contributions to the field of biochemistry genetics was recognized at an event honoring Maimonides and Menachem M. Schneerson, in the nation's capital, hosted by Bob Dole and Joe Biden.

[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] In August 1961, at the International Congress of Biochemistry in Moscow, Nirenberg presented a paper to a small group of scientists, reporting the decoding of the first codon of the genetic code.

The period between 1961 and 1962 is often referred to as the "coding race" because of the competition between the labs of Nirenberg at NIH and Nobel laureate Severo Ochoa at New York University Medical School, who had a massive staff.

Dr. DeWitt Stetten, Jr., director of the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, called this period of collaboration "NIH's finest hour".