Like so many Australian chemists of his generation, Sir John Cornforth made his career in England. In 1975, Cornforth received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, jointly with Vladimir Prelog. A centrally important fact about Cornforth is that, from his late teens, he was totally deaf. He therefore belongs to that group of people who reached eminence and international stature while suffering from a serious disability. Others are Beethoven and John Oriel, a pioneering chemical engineer, who lost his eyesight through exposure to mustard gas but went on to become a major influence in the formation of the Institution of Chemical Engineers in the UK.
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