Melvin Calvin

Melvin Ellis Calvin (April 8, 1911 – January 8, 1997) was an American biochemist known for discovering the Calvin cycle along with Andrew Benson and James Bassham, for which he was awarded the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

He spent most of his five-decade career at the University of California, Berkeley.

Melvin Calvin was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, the son of Elias Calvin and Rose Herwitz, Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire (now known as Lithuania and Georgia).

At an early age, Melvin Calvin’s family moved to Detroit, MI where his parents ran a grocery store to earn their living.

Melvin Calvin was often found exploring his curiosity by looking through all of the products that made up their shelves.

Something he quickly recognized is the importance of chemistry to everyday products and our daily lives.

After he graduated from Central High School in 1928, he went on to study at Michigan College of Mining and Technology (now known as Michigan Technological University) where he received the school’s first Bachelors of Science in Chemistry.

He went on to earn his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota in 1935.

While under the mentorship of George Glocker, he studied and wrote his thesis on the electron affinity of halogens.

He was invited to join the lab of Michael Polanyi as a Post Doctoral student at the University of Manchester.

The two years he spent at the lab were focused on studying the structure and behavior of organic molecules.

Calvin's original research at UC Berkeley was based on the discoveries of Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben in long-lived radioactive carbon-14 in 1940.

In 1942, He married Marie Genevieve Jemtegaard, and they had three daughters, Elin, Sowie, and Karole, and a son, Noel.

On a visit to the University of Manchester, Joel Hildebrand, the director of UC Radiation Laboratory, invited Calvin to join the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.

This made him the first non-Berkeley graduate hired by the chemistry department in +25 years.

He invited Calvin to push forward in radioactive carbon research because "now was the time".

Despite this Ernest Lawrence, the Radiation Laboratory director, was proud of the work they had done and wanted to see the research furthered so he along with Wendell Latimer, the Dean of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, recruited Calvin in 1945.

The lab's original focus was on the applications of Carbon-14 in medicine and synthesis of radio-labeled amino acids and biological metabolites for medical research.

Calvin began to establish the lab by recruiting strong chemists in labs across the country.

In 1947, he was promoted to a Professor of Chemistry and the director of the Bio-Organic Chemistry group in the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory.

The team he formed included: Andrew Benson, James A. Bassham, and several others.

Andrew Benson was tasked with setting up the photosynthesis laboratory.

The purpose of this lab was to discover the path of carbon fixation through the process of photosynthesis.

The greatest impact of the research was discovering the way that light energy converts into chemical energy.

Using the carbon-14 isotope as a tracer, Calvin, Andrew Benson and James Bassham mapped the complete route that carbon travels through a plant during photosynthesis, starting from its absorption as atmospheric carbon dioxide to its conversion into carbohydrates and other organic compounds.

The process is part of the photosynthesis cycle.

It was given the name the Calvin–Benson–Bassham Cycle, named for the work of Melvin Calvin, Andrew Benson, and James Bassham.

There were many people who contributed to this discovery but ultimately Melvin Calvin led the charge (see below).

In 1963, Calvin was given the additional title of Professor of Molecular Biology.

He also spent many years testing the chemical evolution of life and wrote a book on the subject that was published in 1969.

The circular laboratory known as the “Roundhouse”  was designed to facilitate collaboration between students and visiting scientists in Calvin’s lab.

It was created as Calvin had an insatiable curiosity that drove him to become well versed in many fields and recognize the benefits of cross disciplinary collaboration.

Open scientific discussion was a large part of his students' everyday lives and he wanted to create a community space where all kinds of minds and knowledge were brought together.

In order to help facilitate this in the Roundhouse, he brought in post doctoral students and guest scientists from all around the world.

The community Calvin created within the roundhouse was one that students and staff members felt they could truly reach their potential in.

Calvin became known for his management skills which many creative scientific outlets are modeled after today.

He was known as Mr. Photosynthesis but that does not even begin to describe how his organizational and management skills revolutionized the scientific community across all fronts.

The discovery of the Calvin cycle would start by building on the research done by Sam Ruben and Martin Kamen after their work on the carbon-14 isotope came to an end after Rebun’s accidental death in the laboratory and Kamen found himself in trouble over security breaches with the FBI and Department of State.

He was founder and Director of the Laboratory of Chemical Biodynamics, known as the “Roundhouse”, and simultaneously Associate Director of Berkeley Radiation Laboratory, where he conducted much of his research until his retirement in 1980.

In his final years of active research, he studied the use of oil-producing plants as renewable sources of energy.