John Ralph | |
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Born | Canterbury, New Zealand | October 10, 1954
Nationality | New Zealander, American |
Alma mater | University of Wisconsin-Madison |
Occupations |
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Years active | Since 1976 |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | |
Thesis | Reactions of lignin model quinone methides and NMR studies of lignins (1982) |
Doctoral advisor |
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John Ralph (born October 10, 1954) is a New Zealand-born, American chemist, wood scientist, and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Department of Biochemistry). [1] [2] He is an elected fellow (FIAWS) of the International Academy of Wood Science [3] and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (FAAAS).
Ralph received the Anselme Payen Award in 2013 by the American Chemical Society for his research contributions to the science and chemical technology of cellulose and mostly in lignin chemistry. [4] In 2024, Ralph, along with Belgian biochemist Wout Boerjan, received the prestigius Marcus Wallenberg Prize for the yearlong research on lignin chemistry. [5]
Ralph was born in Canterbury, New Zealand, where he grew up. He earned his BSc (Hons) degree in chemistry from the University of Canterbury in 1976. In 1982, he received his PhD by carrying out studies on lignins using NMR, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison under the supervision of Raymond A. Young of the Department of Forestry and Larry Landucci of the Forest Products Laboratory. [6]
Following his role as a research scientist at the Forest Research Institute in Rotorua between 1974 and 1987, Ralph assumed the position of scientific head at the Research Laboratory for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley.
Between 1988 and 2008, Ralph was a research chemist at the USDA-ARS U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center in Madison, Wisconsin, holding joint appointments in the Departments of Forestry and Biological Systems Engineering at the University of Wisconsin. [7]
In 2008, Ralph was appointed a professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since 2015, he has held the title of distinguished professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. Ralph currently sits on the editorial boards of several journals, including BioEnergy Research, Journal of Wood Chemistry and Technology, Holzforschung, and Journal Science of Food and Agriculture.
Ralph received the Anselme Payen Award in 2013 from the American Chemical Society for his research contributions in lignin chemistry. [4] In October 2023, a referenced meta-research carried out by John Ioannidis and his team at the Stanford University, included Ralph in Elsevier Data 2022, where he was ranked in the global top 2% of researchers of all time in the area of chemical biology (plant biology – organic chemistry). [8]
His referred review work titled Lignin biosynthesis, which was published in 2003 at the journal Annual Review of Plant Biology, has received until June 2024, more than 5.700 international citations.
Ralph was recipient of the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Symposium of Wood, Fiber, and Pulping Chemistry. He is also a distinguished professor at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. [9] Up to June 2024, Ralph has received more than 69,000 international citations for his research works in Google Scholar and has an h-index of 134. [10]
Cellulose is an organic compound with the formula (C
6H
10O
5)
n, a polysaccharide consisting of a linear chain of several hundred to many thousands of β(1→4) linked D-glucose units. Cellulose is an important structural component of the primary cell wall of green plants, many forms of algae and the oomycetes. Some species of bacteria secrete it to form biofilms. Cellulose is the most abundant organic polymer on Earth. The cellulose content of cotton fiber is 90%, that of wood is 40–50%, and that of dried hemp is approximately 57%.
Lignin is a class of complex organic polymers that form key structural materials in the support tissues of most plants. Lignins are particularly important in the formation of cell walls, especially in wood and bark, because they lend rigidity and do not rot easily. Chemically, lignins are polymers made by cross-linking phenolic precursors.
Paul Delos Boyer was an American biochemist, analytical chemist, and a professor of chemistry at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for research on the "enzymatic mechanism underlying the biosynthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP)" with John E. Walker, making Boyer the first Utah-born Nobel laureate; the remainder of the Prize in that year was awarded to Danish chemist Jens Christian Skou for his discovery of the Na+/K+-ATPase.
Guaiacol is an organic compound with the formula C6H4(OH)(OCH3). It is a phenolic compound containing a methoxy functional group. Guaiacol appears as a viscous colorless oil, although aged or impure samples are often yellowish. It occurs widely in nature and is a common product of the pyrolysis of wood.
Xylan is a type of hemicellulose, a polysaccharide consisting mainly of xylose residues. It is found in plants, in the secondary cell walls of dicots and all cell walls of grasses. Xylan is the third most abundant biopolymer on Earth, after cellulose and chitin.
The history of biochemistry can be said to have started with the ancient Greeks who were interested in the composition and processes of life, although biochemistry as a specific scientific discipline has its beginning around the early 19th century. Some argued that the beginning of biochemistry may have been the discovery of the first enzyme, diastase, in 1833 by Anselme Payen, while others considered Eduard Buchner's first demonstration of a complex biochemical process alcoholic fermentation in cell-free extracts to be the birth of biochemistry. Some might also point to the influential work of Justus von Liebig from 1842, Animal chemistry, or, Organic chemistry in its applications to physiology and pathology, which presented a chemical theory of metabolism, or even earlier to the 18th century studies on fermentation and respiration by Antoine Lavoisier.
The Anselme Payen Award is an annual prize named in honor of Anselme Payen, the French scientist who discovered cellulose, and was a pioneer in the chemistry of both cellulose and lignin.
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Henry A. Lardy NAS AAA&S APS was a biochemist and professor emeritus in the biochemistry department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1958, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1965, and the American Philosophical Society in 1976. Research in Lardy's laboratory centered on elucidating the mechanisms underlying metabolism.
Stephen James Benkovic is an American chemist known for his contributions to the field of enzymology. He holds the Evan Pugh University Professorship and Eberly Chair in Chemistry at The Pennsylvania State University. He has developed boron compounds that are active pharmacophores against a variety of diseases. Benkovic has concentrated on the assembly and kinetic attributes of the enzymatic machinery that performs DNA replication, DNA repair, and purine biosynthesis.
Deborah Pierson Delmer is an American plant pathologist, and professor emeritus at University of California, Davis. She was one of the first scientists to discover the enzymes and biochemical mechanisms for tryptophan synthesis.
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Eric Oldfield is a British chemist, the Harriet A. Harlin Professor of Chemistry and a professor of Biophysics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is known for his work in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of lipids, proteins, and membranes; of inorganic solids; in computational chemistry, and in microbiology and parasitology. He has received a number of recognitions for his work, including the American Chemical Society's Award in Pure Chemistry, the Royal Society of Chemistry's Meldola Medal and the Biochemical Society's Colworth Medal, and he is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
The International Academy of Wood Science (IAWS) is an international academy and a non-profit assembly of wood scientists, recognizing all fields of wood science with their associated technological domains and securing a worldwide representation.
Roger M. Rowell is an American biochemist and wood scientist of the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison and emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is an elected fellow (FIAAM) of the International Association for Advanced Materials and an elected fellow (FIAWS) of the International Academy of Wood Science.
Raymond Allen Young is an American materials researcher, wood scientist and emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is an elected fellow (FIAWS) of the International Academy of Wood Science.
Gary J. Pielak is an American biological chemist who is known for developing quantitative techniques for measuring protein structure, stability, diffusion, and concentration in living cells, and under crowded conditions.
Josef Franz Gierer is an Austrian-born Swedish emeritus professor of organic chemistry and wood scientist specializing in lignin research, who is a member of the International Academy of Wood Science and honorary recipient of the Anselme Payen Award.
Thomas Rosenau is a German-Austrian chemist and wood scientist specializing in chemistry, who is professor at the Department of Chemistry at BOKU University in Vienna, and also, elected member at the International Academy of Wood Science and honorary recipient of the Anselme Payen Award.
Kyösti Vilho Sarkanen (1921–1990) was a Finnish-American organic chemist and wood scientist, who served as a Professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. He was the honorary recipient of the Anselme Payen Award in 1979 from the American Chemical Society, and an elected fellow of the International Academy of Wood Science.