Melvin Ellis Calvin was a Jewish-American biochemist who was awarded the ‘Nobel Prize’ in Chemistry in 1961 for his renowned discovery of the ‘Calvin cycle’ that encompass three phases of light-independent reactions of photosynthesis - carbon fixation, reduction reactions, and ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate (RuBP) regeneration. This discovery was made by Calvin along with American biologist Andrew Benson and American scientist James Bassham. In his career span of around five decades, most of which was spent at the ‘University of California’, Berkeley, he made several studies that yielded significant discoveries covering a broad area of biological and physical chemistry. The series of investigations made by Calvin included work on hydrogen activation; radiation chemistry; electronic structure of organic molecules; artificial photosynthesis; photoelectronic, electronic and photochemical behaviour of porphyrins; and chemical evolution of life among others. He worked on isolating and purifying plutonium from other irradiated nuclear fission products of uranium by applying chelation and solvent extraction while working in the ‘Manhattan Project’. He and his wife Genevieve Jemtegaard collaborated to study chemical factors present in Rh blood group system and helped to ascertain structure of one of the Rh antigens that they named ‘elinin’. He received several awards and recognition including ‘Davy Medal’ from the ‘Royal Society of London’ (1964), ‘Priestley Medal’ (1978) and the U.S. ‘National Medal of Science’ (1989).