Sir John Warcup Cornforth AC CBE (b. 1917) won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1975 for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalysed reactions. Born in Sydney, Cornforth attended Sydney Boys' High School, but over the course of his teenage years he became progressively deaf from otosclerosis. He left Sydney University with the University Medal in 1937 without ever having heard a university lecture. After postgraduate research in Sydney, Cornforth took up a scholarship to Oxford to work with Robert Robinson. Turning from his work on steroid synthesis, Cornforth worked with Robinson on the chemistry of penicillin; later they co-wrote The Chemistry of Penicillin (1949). After the war, they collaborated on chemically synthesising cholesterol, then Cornforth turned to the biosynthesis of cholesterol from acetic acid. Accepting the Nobel Prize, he said that 'it must be rare to be rewarded so generously for work that was so purely a pleasure in planning and execution.' Cornforth was Australian of the Year in 1975. It was one of the four years in which the Canberra Australia Day Council also recognised an Australian of the Year; Major General Alan Stretton was his fellow office-bearer.
Australian of the Year 1975
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2004
© Nick Sinclair
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