NOBEL. The Photosynthesis of Carbon Compounds

New York: W.A. Benjamin, Inc., 1962. First printing.

LANDMARK FIRST-HAND GUIDE TO THE ELUCIDATION OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS THAT LED TO THE NOBEL PRIZE IN 1961.

15.5x23.5 hardcover, green cloth binding, i-xii, 127 pp, illustrations. Near fine in near fine dust jacket.

MELVIN CALVIN (1911 - 1997) earned his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1935, then became a researcher at the University of Manchester, England before joining 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. 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. Calvin was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1961 for his work in this area and he described his findings in Photosynthesis of Carbon Compounds (1962), offered here.

JAMES A. BASSHAM (1922 - 2012) was an American scientist known for his work on photosynthesis. He earned his Ph.D. degree from Berkeley in 1949 under supervision by Melvin Calvin in the Bio-Organic Chemistry Group of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at the University of California. He discovered, with Melvin Calvin and Andrew Benson, the Calvin-Benson-Bassham cycle. He continued his work as Associate Director of this group.