Melvin Calvin

Melvin Calvin was born on April 8th, 1911 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Melvin Calvin’s parents were immigrants from Europe, his father, Elias Calvin, was from Kalvaria, Lithuania and his mother, Rose Herwitz, was from Russian Georgia. Melvin Calvin showed an early interest in science, more towards the disciplines of chemistry and physics. At the Michigan College of Mining and Technology (now MTU, Michigan Technical University), Calvin received his Bachelor’s degree in chemistry, making him the 1st chemistry major at the college in 1931. Four years later in 1935 Melvin Calvin received a doctorate in chemistry with his dissertation on the electron affinity of halogen atoms at the University of Minnesota.
Later in his academic career, Calvin would

Calvin’s father, Elias, worked as a cigar maker after moving to America from Kalvaria,Lithuania. When Elias was entering America from Ellis Island, he had to change his last name to Calvin from his Lithuanian name. Elias soon lost his job as a cigar maker and had to relocate to find a new job as an auto mechanic. The Calvin family had to move to Detroit, Michigan so Elias could support his family as a new mechanic for the Cadillac Motor-Car Company. Elias Calvin became a fine auto-mechanical worker but didn’t want his son to go into such manually demanding work, so he would tell Calvin to follow his interest in academics. Calvin’s father helped fuel his son’s interest in

We should discuss what is a carbohydrate, photosynthesis, and the light-dependent stage (light phase) of photosynthesis including the organelles and proteins involved. Usually people address carbohydrates as sugars or “hydrates of carbon”, usually monosaccharides such as glucose, sucrose, and galactose are well known. A more organic chemistry view of carbohydrates is a polyhydroxylated chain of carbon which contain hydroxylated substituents. We can aldoses or ketoses which is a carbohydrate that contains an aldehyde (aldose) or ketone