Calvin & Lawrence @ Old Radiation Lab
TEXTBOOKS DIVIDE and wars unite the most unexpected of stories. Two stories that began from the Old Radiation Laboratory in University of California, Berkeley are hardly ever housed together in our hallowed syllabi. So it is not unnatural that the story of atomic bomb and the dark cycle of photosynthesis are unconnected to the “science student” in general.
Let us check into the site bancroft.berkeley.edu/Exhibits/Biotech/calvin.html which has an interesting anecdote to whet our appetite. At the end of the II World War, on 2 September, 1945 when Japan surrendered in, it is said, Ernest Lawrence, the then director of Radiation Laboratory suggested to Melvin Calvin that it was time to do something useful with the stable radioactive C-14. This was just not the director speaking but the person who held US patent 1948384 and the 1939 Nobel Prize for “for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements”.
So after the end of the II World War, the Old Radiation Laboratory, at Berkeley where Ernest Lawrence had housed his 37-inch cyclotron, became home to the Bio-Organic Chemistry Group. It was headed by Melvin Calvin with Andrew Alm Benson joining as its deputy director and James Bassham coming in later as doctoral student. They pioneered the use of carbon-14 tracer to work out the pit stops on a chemical pathway generating 22 papers as they reported their discoveries. Their contributions lead to the pathway being called Calvin–Benson–Bassham (CBB) cycle or commonly the Dark Cycle of photosynthesis. It unraveled the main mechanism by which plants make food by converting a single carbon dioxide into a six-carbon glucose.
Stories in science, however enticing, important and attention grabbing rarely begin with once upon a time and end with happily ever after, especially not in the 20th century. Thus when textbooks carry the dividends of science to students there must be place for a room with a view to seek perspective. In the great scientific effort that came out of the Radiation Laboratory, quite a few elements did not end happily ever after. The cyclotron contributed fission grade uranium and plutonium to Project Manhattan that finally unleashed the Little Boy and Fat Man and on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Japan on August 6 & 9, 1945. Only one out of three main team members that revealed the Calvin–Benson–Bassham (CBB) Cycle received the Nobel Prize so the cycle is more often than not simply called the Calvin Cycle.
On the other hand some things did just not end happily but gave rise to positive dividends ever after. So Berkeley scientists would go on to discover 16 elements which is more than any other university in the world till date. Among the elements discovered are mendelevium, curium, seaborgium, berkelium, einsteinium, fermium and lawrencium, all named in honor scientists whose work initiated and took forward the “Atomic Age”. As Melvin Calvin’s Bioorganic Group outgrew the Old Radiation Laboratory, he is said to have personally designed the new Laboratory of Chemical Biodynamics. The design came to be known as the “Roundhouse” or “Calvin Carousel” characterized by its circular structure and open spaces to carry forward the interdisciplinary interaction that had been the strength of his photosynthesis group. It was finally renamed the Melvin Calvin Laboratory when he retired in 1980 with its present work focusing on cell and molecular biology.
To end this edition of Green Cardamoms, it unusual but befitting to go back to Tennyson’s poem, “The Brook”. Do read it again as I did. The journey and rhythm of the brook and scientific discoveries seem perfectly matched as they flow over dark and light patches to join the brimming river, as men come and go. ([email protected])
[Main resources: Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, Govindjee (September 2010), “Celebrating Andrew Alm Benson’s 93rd birthday”, Photosynthesis Research 105 (3): 201–8, Bassham, James A (2003), Mapping the carbon reduction cycle: A personal retrospective, Photosynthesis Research 76 (1–3): 35–52. www.berkeleycitizen.org/radiation/calvin1.htm]