John Cornforth:
John Cornforth is an Australian chemist and Nobel laureate.
Birth:
September 7, 1917 in Sydney, Australia
Claim to Fame:
Cornforth is an Australian chemist who was awarded half the 1975 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalyzed reactions. He was studying enzymes that can catalyze changes in organic substrates that replace the hydrogen atoms in the substrate's rings and chains. He managed to identify specifically which hydrogen atoms would be replaced for different enzymes. This allowed him to determine the steps involved in the biosynthesis of cholesterol.
