Nobel Prize Winners Calvin, Melvin

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. 

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. 

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