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Portrait of Melvin Calvin

Unknown (Mondadori Publishers) · Public domain

Melvin Calvin

American biochemist

1911 – 1997aged 85

Worked out the sequence of chemical reactions by which plants turn carbon dioxide into sugar during photosynthesis, tracing the carbon atom's path with radioactive tracers alongside Andrew Benson and James Bassham. The result, now called the Calvin cycle, is still the standard account of how plants fix carbon, and won Calvin the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

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