The RNA World referred to an hypothetical stage in the origin of life on Earth.

Altman was married to Ann Korner in 1972. "The discovery of the first radiochemically pure precursor to a tRNA molecule enabled me to get a job as an assistant professor at Yale University in 1971 a difficult time to get any job at all. Mol Biosyst (2007 Sep) 3 (9): 604–7.

Cech for their work on the catalytic properties of RNA. In 1989 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas R.