Melvin CalvinMelvin Calvin will forever be remembered as a great chemist. He spent his whole life working towards discovery. He and his team discovered the Calvin cycle. This cycle is the route that carbon travels through plants. This discovery is world-famous for "unlocking the secrets of photosynthesis" in plants. For this he was awarded the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.Calvin joined the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley in 1937. By 1963, he was named Professor of Molecular Biology. He was the founder and director of the Chemical Biodynamics Lab. He was also the associate director of the Berkeley Radiation Lab at the same time.According to legend, on the day of the Japanese surrender in World War II, the head of the laboratory came to Calvin. He said, "Now is the time to do something useful with radioactive carbon." He was referring to the isotope of carbon that had been discovered in 1940. This isotope had been used in the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan. In response, Calvin organized a team of Rad Lab researchers. They began to study the photosynthetic process. This is the process by which green plants convert energy from the sun into chemical energy.Calvin and his team used the carbon-14 isotope as a tracer. They mapped the complete route that carbon travels through a plant. The path starts from its intake as carbon dioxide from the air to the point where it changes into carbohydrates. In doing so, the Calvin group showed that sunlight acts on the chlorophyll in a plant. It fuels the creation of organic compounds. Before this discovery, sunlight was believed to act only on the carbon dioxide within a plant.Calvin's work led to a lifelong interest in energy production. He also spent many years testing the chemical evolution of life. He wrote a book on the subject that was published in 1969. Calvin actively pursued scientific research into his old age. He studied the use of oil-producing plants. He looked at them as renewable sources of energy. Calvin even analyzed moon rocks. He was a man who loved science. It was more important to him than the many awards he received.The wordpursuedin the passage is closest in meaning to …