Amar J. S. Klar was born in April 1, 1947 in Lyallpur,Punjab, India. He received his undergraduate degree in biochemistry (1967) and masters of science in microbiology (1969), both from Punjab Agriculture University, Hissar, India. Dr. Klar then received his Ph.D. in bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin in 1975 and afterwards studied genetics as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California. In 1978, Dr. Klar joined the staff at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he served as director of the Delbruck laboratory from 1985 to 1988. In 1988, he joined the ABL-Basic Research Program as head of the Developmental Genetics Section. In 1999, Dr. Klar moved to the Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland. The bulk of this collection refers to his time at CSHL.

Throughout his career, Dr. Klar’s research has focused on genetics and molecular biology of gene silencing and mating-types in yeast as well as preferences for hand utilization in humans and other marked characteristics.

The Amar Klar Collection at the CSHL Library and Archive documents the research of Dr. Amar J. S. Klar during his time at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (1978-1988), where he worked with Jeff Strathern and Jim Hicks at Delbruck Laboratory in the Yeast Group. The collection consists of laboratory research notebooks and a very small number of photographs and correspondence included in the first notebook.