Sir John W. Cornforth

Sir John W. Cornforth, born in 1917, Australian-born British organic chemist and Nobel Prize winner. Working with chemical reactions that involve enzymes, Cornforth specialized in the analysis of the spatial orientation, called stereochemistry, of these reactions. For these studies, he shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Vladimir Prelog.

Born in Sydney, Australia, Cornforth studied organic chemistry at the University of Sydney but then left Australia for England in 1939, where he lived for the remainder of his career. After completing his doctorate at the University of Oxford in 1941, he worked on defense-related projects during World War II (1939-1945), namely the study of the new drug penicillin. In 1946 he joined the National Institute for Medical Research in London and remained there until 1962, when he became director of the Milstead Laboratory of Chemical Enzymology. He ultimately retired as a research professor at the University of Sussex.

Cornforth's Nobel Prize-winning work involved the study of enzymes, which act as catalysts in helping certain chemical reactions take place. In living organisms, many types of molecules, such as glucose, amino acids, and proteins, have a certain spatial orientation that must exist for them to function properly. Cornforth found that enzymes help molecules achieve the correct spatial orientation, allowing them to participate in essential life processes. He used this information to discover the stereochemistry of dozens of reactions involving enzymes. He also studied the spatial details of how enzymes help transform mevalonic acid (C₆H₁₂O₄) into either steroids (lipids with a ring structure) or terpenes (hydrocarbons, C₁₀H₁₆), two very different biological compounds.

A highly honored chemist, Cornforth was elected to the Royal Society, a prestigious scientific organization, in 1953. He was knighted in 1977 by Queen Elizabeth II, and in 1991 he received his homeland's highest honor, Companion of the Order of Australia. He achieved these accomplishments with a disability that clearly did not hamper his success—since his early 20s, Cornforth was completely deaf. His wife, Rita, also an organic chemist, assisted him in communicating with other researchers.