Nobel Prize, Melvin Calvin

Under his guidance, the chemistry department at Berkeley became perhaps the most prestigious in the country. Among the faculty and graduate students that he attracted were five future Nobel Prize winners Harold Urey in 1934, William Giauque in 1949, Glenn Seaborg in 1951, Willard Libby in 1960, and Melvin Calvin in 1961. 

The term chemical evolution" was introduced by the Nobel Prize winner Melvin Calvin and refers to the process of the synthesis of biochemically important molecules from small molecules and certain chemical elements under the (hypothetical) conditions present on prebiotic Earth. It is assumed that the smaller building block molecules such as amino acids, fatty acids or nucleobases were formed initially, and that these underwent polycondensation to give macromolecules in later stages of development. 

After the Californian biochemist Melvin Calvin, who received the Nobel Prize for his discovery that the first product of C02 fixation was phosphoglycerate, and went on to establish the cycle. 

CALVIN, MELVIN (1911-1997). An American chemist who won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1961. Muck of his work involved the study of photosynthesis, biophysics, and application of physics and chemistry of molecules to some of the basic problems of biology. His doctorate was from the University of Minnesota. He did postgraduate work in England and at Northwestern University and the University or Notre Dame. 

Melvin Calvin, who won the Nobel Prize in 1961, elucidated the biochemical pathways in photosynthesis. 

Ribulose (— a-D-Ribulose) (pentose monosaccharide) Universal photosynthetic Calvin Cycle intermediate (phosphorylated) Melvin Calvin (USA, Nobel Prize, 1961, Chemistry, photosynthesis Calvin cycle) Sweet... 

American biochemist Melvin Calvin (born 1911). In the 1950s, Calvin used radioactive isotopes to elucidate the chemical details of the process of photosynthesis. He won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1961. The photograph was taken at the University of California at Berkeley, where Calvin directed the chemical biodynamics laboratory in the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory (later the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory). (Courtesy of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory/Science Photo Library)... 

Let us return to the so-called dark reaction of photosynthesis. In it, both the NADPH2 and the ATP formed in the light reactions are consumed in the fixation of C02. The fixation reactions were charted by Melvin Calvin and his co-workers in Berkeley, California (for which Calvin received the Nobel Prize for 1961), with the use of radioactive carbon dioxide. During these reactions, C02 is made to combine with a pentose (5-carbon) sugar, ribulose diphosphate, to give an unstable 6-carbon intermediate which breaks down to two molecules of the 3-carbon phosphoglyceric acid. 

However, the actual process is extremely complex 13 enzyme-catalyzed steps are required to incorporate each molecule of CO2, so the six CO2 molecules incorporated to form one molecule of C6H12O6 require six repetitions of the pathway. Melvin Calvin and his coworkers took seven years to determine the pathway, using in CO2 as the tracer and painstakingly separating the products formed after different times of light exposure. Calvin won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1961 for this remarkable achievement. 

The (CH20) is the general formula for a carbohydrate. It was then assumed that the energy stored in the carbohydrate was used in other chemical reactions to synthesize all the other plant materials (proteins, lipids, fats, and so on). It is now clear that amino acids, for example, are immediate products of the photosynthetic reduction of carbon dioxide, and that carbohydrate need not be synthesized first. This is not to minimize the importance of the photosynthesis of carbohydrate, but only to note that many other types of compounds are produced photosynthetically. The overall mechanism and many of the details of the carbon reduction cycle, CO2 to carbohydrate, were worked out by Melvin Calvin and his colleagues, for which he received the Nobel Prize. 

Throughout the 1950s, Melvin Calvin continued to employ carbon-14 labeling in his studies of the fate of carbon in photosynthesis (see chapter 5). He completed the photosynthetic carbon cycle ( Calvin cycle ) in 1958 and received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1961. 

Calvin, Melvin (1911-1997) Born of Russian emigrant parents in Minnesota. University of California at Berkeley in 1937, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory since 1946 and full professor since 1947 Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1961. 

Calvin cycle, reductive pentose phosphate cycle, photosyuthetlc carbon reduction cycle a series of 13 enzyme-catalysed reactions, occurring in the chloro-plast stroma in plants or the cytoplasm in photosyn-thetic bacteria, which are organized into a cycle, the purpose of which is to convert CO2 into carbohydrate using the reduced pyridine nucleotide (NADPH in plants, NADH in photosynthetic bacteria) and ATP generated in the Ught phase of photosynthesis (see Photosynthesis). The cycle was di vered by Melvin Calvin, research that earned him the Nobel Prize for... 

A cycle, by definition, can have no beginning and no end. So, materials are added and withdrawn tangentially as the cycle turns. Many of the features of the Calvin cyde were worked out by Melvin Calvin (Nobel Prize 1961), James Bassham, and Andrew Benson (Harvard University) in the decade immediately following World War II. More information about the Calvin cycle will be presented in Chapter 11. The classic report is Bassham, J. Benson, A. Calvin, M. /. Biol. Chem., 1950,185,781. 

Melvin Calvin received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1961 for his work on photosynthesis. 

Melvin Calvin, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry in 1961 for his work on the mechanism of photosynthesis, has been one of the principal workers in the search for plants which produce more suitable hydrocarbons, e.g., a latex with a mol. wt. of 2,000 Da which can be used as a substitute for oil. One plant he has studied. Euphorbia (E. lathyris) yields, on semiarid land, an emulsion which can be converted into oil at about 15 bbl/acre. Another tree. Copaiba, from the Amazon Basin, produces oil (not an aqueous emulsion) directly from a hole drilled in the tmnk about 1 m from the ground. The yield is approximately 25 F in 2-3 h every 6 months. This oil is a Cis terpene (tri-isoprene) which has been used in a diesel truck (directly from tree to tank) without processing. 

Melvin Calvin won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1961 for his research on the assimilation of carbon dioxide in plants. 

Calvin, Melvin (1911-97) American chemist. Calvin worked out the biological mechanisms that occur in photosynthesis. He used techniques such as chromatography and radioisotopes to study the reactions of photosynthesis that do not require light. He found that there is a series of reactions, now known as the Calvin cycle. Calvin summarized his findings in a work entitled The Path of Carbon in Photosynthesis (1957). Calvin won the 1961 Nobel Prize for chemistry for his work on photosynthesis. He continued to work on various problems associated with photosynthesis. 

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