Melvin Calvin

Melvin Ellis Calvin was born April 8, 1911, and built his career across five decades at the University of California, Berkeley. Working with Andrew Benson and James Bassham, he traced the pathway by which plants assimilate carbon dioxide during photosynthesis — a sequence of reactions now called the Calvin cycle. The work earned him the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He died January 8, 1997.