Amar Klar

Amar Jit Singh Klar (April 1, 1947 – March 5, 2017) was an Indian-American yeast geneticist and epigenetics researcher. He received media attention for his research on the genetics of human traits, including handedness and the direction of hair whorls.

Klar was born on April 1, 1947 in Lyallpur, which was then part of Punjab, India, but is now part of Pakistan. He earned his undergraduate degree in 1967 and his master's degree in 1969, both from Punjab Agricultural University. In 1975, he received his Ph.D. in bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he studied under Harlyn O. Halvorson. He then completed a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1978, after getting a phone call from James Watson, Klar began doing yeast research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). He continued to work there until 1988, and served as director of their Delbrück Laboratory from 1985 until then. In 1988, he left CSHL to join the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Gene Regulation and Chromosome Biology Laboratory, which was affiliated with the NCI-ABL Basic Research Program in Frederick, Maryland. In 1999, he became a Principal Investigator in the Gene Regulation and Chromosome Biology Laboratory at the NCI's Center for Cancer Research.

Klar was married to Kuljit Klar, with whom he had two daughters: Natasha and Amy. He died in his yard in Frederick, Maryland on March 5, 2017. His obituary in the Journal of Biosciences stated that he died from a "freak head injury".