John Cornforth

I was born on 7 September 1917 at Sydney in Australia. My father was English-born and a graduate of Oxford; my mother, born Hilda Eipper, was descended from a German minister of religion who settled in New South Wales in 1832. I was the second of four children.

Throughout my scientific career, my wife has been my most constant collaborator. Her experimental skill made major contributions to the work; she has eased for me beyond measure the difficulties of communication that accompany deafness; her encouragement and fortitude have been my strongest supports.

After a year of post-graduate research, I won an 1851 Exhibition scholarship to work at Oxford with Robert Robinson. Two such scholarships were awarded each year, and the other was won by Rita Harradence, also of Sydney and also an organic chemist.

Part of my childhood was spent in Sydney and part in rural New South Wales, at Armidale.

In a world where it is so easy to neglect, deny, corrupt and suppress the truth, the scientist may find his discipline severe. For him, truth is so seldom the sudden light that shows new order and beauty; more often, truth is the uncharted rock that sinks his ship in the dark.

My old friend Vlado Prelog has asked me to offer, from both of us, our thanks to the Royal Academy of Sciences and to the Nobel Foundation for the honour conferred on us.

The total loss of hearing was a process that lasted more than a decade, but it was sufficiently gradual for me to attend Sydney Boys' High School and to profit from the teaching there.

In 1967, I had formed a collaboration with Hermann Eggerer, then of Muenchen, and together, we solved the problem of the 'asymmetric methyl group' and applied the solution in some of the many ways that have proved possible.

The essential principles of the three-dimensional structure of organic molecules had been correctly formulated by the first Nobel laureate in Chemistry, Jacobus van't Hoff, as early as 1874.

By combining chemical, biochemical and physical techniques, it has thus become possible to investigate the nature of enzymic catalysis in a novel manner, complementary to the other approaches which have developed over the same period.

Life does depend on accurate replication of molecules, and its complexity often requires that an enzyme shall accept one molecular species or type and transform it to equally specific products.

I started doing experiments - mostly in organic chemistry, because it was so much more interesting - in my mother's laundry at home.

At the National Institute for Medical Research, I came into contact with biological scientists and formed collaborative projects with several of them. In particular, George Popjak and I shared an interest in cholesterol.

In 1962, Popjak and I left the service of the Medical Research Council and became co-directors of the Milstead Laboratory of Chemical Enzymology set up by Shell Research Ltd.