Extractions: NEWS RELEASE, 1/9/97 by Kathleen Scalise Berkeley Nobelist Melvin Calvin, a University of California at Berkeley chemistry professor and a leading scientist at the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, died Wednesday (Jan. 8) at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley following years of declining health. He was 85. Labeled "Mr. Photosynthesis" by Time magazine in 1961, Calvin was awarded the Nobel Prize for using radioactive carbon-14 to show steps by which plants turn carbon dioxide and water into sugar during photosynthesis. Today this process is known as the "Calvin Cycle" in photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is the process by which plants capture energy from the sun. "For many years, Melvin was a vital personality on the Berkeley campus who contributed greatly to science," said UC Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien. "It is a sad occasion to lose such a colleague." Calvin, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1961, was a University Professor of Chemistry. Born April 8, 1911, he retired in 1980, but continued his research until recently. His findings sparked the U.S. Department of Energy's interest in solar energy as a source of power.
ScienceMatters @ Berkeley. Melvin Calvin And Photosynthesis ScienceMatters@Berkeley is published online by the College of Letters and Scienceat the University of California, Berkeley. http://sciencematters.berkeley.edu/archives/volume2/issue11/legacy.php
Extractions: Printer-friendly format E-mail this story On September 2, 1945, World War II ended with the Japanese surrender. That day, Ernest Lawrence, Director of UC Berkeley's Radiation Laboratory, suggested to chemistry professor and "Rad Lab" researcher Melvin Calvin that "now is the time to do something useful with radioactive carbon." Professor Melvin Calvin in the Rad Lab. (courtesy Bancroft Library) That nudge eventually led Calvin to uncover the secrets of how plants capture energy from the sun. The research earned Calvin the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. By the 1930s, scientists were aware that plants took in carbon dioxide and water and released oxygen. That decade, radioactive isotopes were first used as "tags" to trace organic molecules through chemical processes. However, the first radioisotope tracers decayed too quickly to make it through the full photosynthesis reaction. Using the newly-discovered Carbon 14 as a tracer though, Calvin and his colleagues followed the entire path of carbon through photosynthesis. From the absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide to its sunlight-fueled conversion via chlorophyll into carbohydrates and other compounds, the researchers shed light on the whole photosynthesis question.
