Melvin Calvin began his academic career with an interest in the practical and physical aspects of chemistry. His greatest accomplishments, however, have been in the interactions between chemistry and the life sciences. In 1961, Calvin was honored with the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his elucidation of the mechanism by which carbon dioxide is incorporated into green plants. In the years that followed, he pursued his interest in some unusual applications of chemistry, such as researching oil-bearing plants for their possible development as alternative energy sources and in the search for other forms of life that may exist in the universe.

Calvin was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on April 8, 1911, to Elias and Rose Irene (Hervitz) Calvin. Both Calvin's parents had emigrated from Russia in the 1880s--his father from an urban area in northern Russia and his mother from a rural region in southern Russia. Calvin's father had apparently...