At an early age, Melvin Calvin’s family moved to Detroit, MI where his parents ran a grocery store to earn their living.

In 1942, He married Marie Genevieve Jemtegaard,[4] and they had three daughters, Elin, Sowie, and Karole, and a son, Noel.

[6] Calvin's original research at UC Berkeley was based on the discoveries of Martin Kamen and Sam Ruben in long-lived radioactive carbon-14 in 1940.

[9] The circular laboratory known as the “Roundhouse”  was designed to facilitate collaboration between students and visiting scientists in Calvin’s lab.

[3] It was created as Calvin had an insatiable curiosity that drove him to become well versed in many fields and recognize the benefits of cross disciplinary collaboration.

Open scientific discussion was a large part of his students' everyday lives and he wanted to create a community space where all kinds of minds and knowledge were brought together.

In order to help facilitate this in the Roundhouse, he brought in post doctoral students and guest scientists from all around the world.

[6] Calvin established a community within the roundhouse where students and staff members felt they could truly realize their potential.

[6] The discovery of the Calvin cycle would start by building on the research done by Sam Ruben and Martin Kamen after their work on the carbon-14 isotope came to an end after Ruben’s accidental death in the laboratory and Kamen found himself in trouble over security breaches with the FBI and Department of State.

Despite this Ernest Lawrence, the Radiation Laboratory director, was proud of the work they had done and wanted to see the research furthered so he along with Wendell Latimer, the Dean of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, recruited Calvin in 1945.

[7] The lab's original focus was on the applications of Carbon-14 in medicine and synthesis of radio-labeled amino acids and biological metabolites for medical research.

He then recruited Andrew Benson, who had worked with Ruben and Kamen previously on photosynthesis and C-14, to head that aspect of the lab.

Benson began his investigation by continuing his previous work with the isolation of the product of dark CO2 fixation and would then crystalize the radioactive succinic acid.

Though met with resistance at the conference Calvin and Benson were able to convince the audience of their position and the attack was dismissed.