Sir John Warcup Cornforth Jr.,AC,CBE,FRS,FAA(7 September 1917 – 8 December 2013) was an Australian–British chemist who won theNobel Prize in Chemistryin 1975 for his work on thestereochemistryofenzyme-catalysedreactions,becoming the only Nobel laureate born inNew South Wales. Cornforth investigated enzymes that catalyse changes in organic compounds, the substrates, by taking the place of hydrogen atoms in a substrate's chains and rings. In his syntheses and descriptions of the structure of variousterpenes,olefins, andsteroids, Cornforth determined specifically which cluster of hydrogen atoms in a substrate were replaced by an enzyme to effect a given change in the substrate, allowing him to detail thebiosynthesisofcholesterol.For this work, he won a share of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1975, alongside co-recipientVladimir Prelog, and was knighted in 1977. Fields: Organic chemistry Education: University of Sydney BSc St Catherine's College, Oxford DPhil