IMPORTANT: SPECIAL SEMINAR TO HONOR PHOTOSYNTHESIS PIONEER ON FRIDAY, JULY 27

As the EBI departs its formative Berkeley headquarters of Calvin Laboratory, where the historic Nobel Prize-winning work on photosynthesis took place, an homage to one of the scientists who pioneered that work will take place on Friday, July 27, at 4 p.m. (Pacific Daylight Time) in 116 Calvin.

A special seminar entitled "A Conversation with Andrew Benson: Reflections on the Discovery of the Calvin-Benson Cycle" will be led by Bob Buchanan, Professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at UC Berkeley. He will talk about the early work of Dr. Andrew Benson and his path-breaking contributions to the field of photosynthesis, work he did in Calvin Lab.

The highlight of the event will be a recently videotaped conversation with the 94-year-old Benson, an Emeritus Professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In the video, Benson discusses his early years as a student at Berkeley and Caltech and his return to Berkeley as a young Ph.D. in 1942. At the end of World War II, Benson joined the photosynthesis research group being formed by Melvin Calvin. In the ensuing eight years, Benson performed his classical Carbon-14 experiments with green algae that served as the basis for developing the photosynthetic carbon cycle (now widely known as the Calvin-Benson cycle). This event presents a unique opportunity to gain insight into the origin and evolution of research that received worldwide acclaim, resulting in Calvin's receiving the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1961.

If you cannot attend in person, the seminar will also be streamed live and can be viewed with any computer that has a browser and internet access. Here's the link to our "channel":

http://www.livestream.com/energybiosciencesinstitute.

A reception will follow the seminar at 5 p.m., serving also as a final-day farewell to the first wave of employees who will be transitioning to the new Energy Biosciences Building downtown the following week.