Emeritus Professor Sir John Cornforth AC, CBE, FRS (BSc ’38 MSc ’39 DSc ’77) was the University’s first Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry in 1975.

John Cornforth was born in Sydney and studied at Sydney Boys’ High School before entering the University of Sydney at the age of 16. While losing his hearing through his teen years from otosclerosis, Cornforth was attracted to laboratory work in organic chemistry by a ‘good young teacher’, Leonard Basser (BSc ’21 DipEd ’22).

Cornforth graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1937 and completed a year of post-graduate research for a Master of Science in 1938. Cornforth’s research earnt him an 1851 Exhibition scholarship to work at Oxford University. Two such scholarships were awarded each year, and the other was won by fellow organic chemist, Rita Harradence (B Sc ’37, M Sc ’38). This began a lifelong personal and professional association as they were married in 1941 and remain together to this day. They spent the war years doing post-graduate and then post-doctoral research with Sir Robert Robinson , Sydney's first (1913-1915) Professor of organic chemistry. They made notable contributions to the chemistry of penicillin and the synthesis of steroid hormones. After the war they joined the National Institute for Medical Research and began to apply chemistry to biological problems.

In 1963 the Cornforths and the biochemist George Popjak founded the Milstead Laboratory of Chemical Enzymology for Shell Research, with Cornforth first as co-director and then as director until 1975. Around 1969 Cornforth collaborated with Hermann Eggerer, and together they solved the problem of the "asymmetric methyl group", which was used to explore the stereochemical course of many enzymic reactions vital to the functioning of living cells.

This research led to Cornforth's 1975 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalysed reactions.”

Cornforth was made a Commander of British Empire in 1972, was knighted in 1977 and was made Companion of the Order of Australia in 1991. He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1953 and is especially proud of possessing its Copley Medal, the society’s oldest award and one shared with a boyhood hero, Captain James Cook RN.

In retirement, the Cornforths’ house overlooks the old town of Lewes and the beautiful Ouse valley.


Last updated 27 November 2006

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