10 Facts About Andrew Benson

Andrew Alm Benson was an American biologist and a professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego, until his retirement in 1989.

Andrew Benson is known for his work in understanding the carbon cycle in plants.

Andrew Benson studied as an undergraduate and masters student at the University of California, Berkeley, where he learned optics from Luis Alvarez and worked in the chemistry lab of Glenn T Seaborg.

Andrew Benson returned to Berkeley as an instructor in July 1942.

Andrew Benson visited Norway from 1951 to 1952 on a Fulbright fellowship to the Norwegian College of Agriculture, and took a faculty position at Pennsylvania State University in 1954.

Andrew Benson moved to UCSD from a previous position at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1962.

In work done from 1946 through 1953, along with Melvin Calvin and James Bassham, Andrew Benson elucidated the path of carbon assimilation in plants.

Andrew Benson was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1972, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1981, and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 1984.

Andrew Benson received the Sugar Research Foundation Award in 1950 and the Stephen Hales Prize of the American Society of Plant Biologists in 1972 for his discovery of ribulose as a product of the carbon cycle.

Andrew Benson is a major figure in episode 2, dealing with photosynthesis, of the history of botany presented in 2011 on BBC Four.