Sir John Warcup 'Kappa' Cornforth, AC, CBE, FRS (born 7 September 1917), is an Australian scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1975 for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalyzed reactions.
He has been deaf since his teens.
Cornforth was born in Sydney, and educated at Sydney Boys High School and Sydney University (from 16 years of age) where he met his wife Rita Harradence. He studied organic chemistry and graduated with fi...
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Sir John Warcup 'Kappa' Cornforth, AC, CBE, FRS (born 7 September 1917), is an Australian scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1975 for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalyzed reactions.
He has been deaf since his teens.
Cornforth was born in Sydney, and educated at Sydney Boys High School and Sydney University (from 16 years of age) where he met his wife Rita Harradence. He studied organic chemistry and graduated with first-class honours and a University medal in 1937. He won a scholarship to study at St Catherine's College, Oxford, and moved there with Rita.
His mother, Hilda Eipper (1887-1969), was the granddaughter of Christopher Eipper.
Cornforth had a profound influence on the work on penicillin during the war. He helped to write The Chemistry of Penicillin (Princeton University Press, 1949), He received his Nobel Prize with Vladimir Prelog in 1975 and was knighted in 1977. He was awarded the Corday-Morgan medal in 1953, Royal Medal in 1976 and the...
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