A SCIENTIST who discovered the detailed chemistry of how enzymes work has been honoured with a blue plaque.

Professor Sir John Cornforth, who worked at the University of Sussex, had a plaque unveiled in his honour at his former workplace near Sittingbourne in Kent.

Before coming to Sussex in 1975, the pioneering chemist spent 13 years at Shell UK’s Milstead Laboratory of Chemical Enzymology, near Sittingbourne.

At Milstead, Cornforth developed his research on enzyme mechanisms – work for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1975.

The legacy of Cornforth, who died in 2013, is that scientists a deeper understanding of many of the biochemical cycles that underpin cellular activity and has stimulated research into the pharmacological mediation of these cycles.

Former colleague professor Jim Hanson said: “Although metal plaques cannot fully encapsulate the memories of a particular time and place and the qualities of the people who worked there, they can provide a permanent reminder of a period of history, and - in the case of Sir John Cornforth - the work of a remarkable scientist.”

Cornforth was born in 1917 in Australia. He studied at the University of Sydney before sailing to England in 1939.

He then studied at the University of Oxford before going on to work at Sittingbourne and then later at Sussex.

All his achievements in life are all the more remarkable given that he was deaf.

Speaking at the blue plaque unveiling, his friend professor Jim Hanson described Cornforth as “warm and approachable”.

He added: “Deafness can be very lonely. Cornforth valued the social environment of the Sittingbourne and Sussex laboratories and the academic friendship of his colleagues.

“Despite his deafness, Kappa [as Cornforth was widely known] had an amazing, almost uncanny ability, not only to pick up what was being said, but also to make apposite and helpful comments. He was generous with his time, to both research students and undergraduates.

“As colleagues watched him work logically through a chemical problem they watched the master chess player that he was, evaluating every possibility methodically, step by step, in order to reach an unambiguous answer.”