Cyril A. Ponnamperuma; Studied Chemical Basis of Life

Cyril A. Ponnamperuma, 71, an India-born chemist widely known for research that he said showed life could be created from chemical sources. Ponnamperuma, who for many years was director of the Laboratory of Chemical Evolution at the University of Maryland, maintained that the basic building blocks of life could be created outside a living cell, although he refused to predict how soon that might happen. In 1984 he reported that his laboratory had produced the five components necessary for life--adenine, guanine, thymine, cytosine and uracil, from which nucleic acids are formed. His laboratory also created the energy-transporting molecule adenosine triphosphate, another necessary component of life. In Washington on Dec. 20 after a heart attack.