American chemist Melvin Calvin was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1911 of Russian immigrant parents. After earning his B.S. from the Minnesota College of Mining and Technology in 1931 and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1935, Calvin became a researcher at the University of Manchester, England. He remained there until 1937, when he joined the chemistry department at the University of California at Berkeley. As a professor at Berkeley, he helped form the research group that later became the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory of the University of California.
Calvin's early research focused on the chemical and physical properties of organic compounds. His investigation of organic molecules proved particularly important, providing a solid foundation for his work in biological chemistry. Using radioisotope carbon-14, Calvin and his colleagues at Berkeley began investigating complex organic systems. Calvin employed this radioisotopic tracer technique in studying the biochemical mechanisms of plant photosynthesis. He described his findings in two treatises, The Path of Carbon in Photosynthesis (1957) and Photosynthesis of Carbon Compounds (1962). Calvin later was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1961 for his work in this area.
Calvin focused his later research on his theories of the chemical evolution of life by studying ancient rocks and by simulating the atmosphere of earth that was thought to exist at that time. He published this research in 1969 in Chemical Evolution.
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