Career
This came in collaboration with a partner and also in relation to work on plant alkaloids. Battersby was born in the United Kingdom. He was Professor of Organic Chemistry at Cambridge University from 1988 - 1992 and is Fellow Emeritus of Street Catharine"s College, Cambridge.
Battersby is known for his research on the biosynthesis of the "pigments of life" haem, chlorophyll and vitamin B12, that are built on closely related tetrapyrrolic structural frameworks.
He has demonstrated and elucidated the essential role played by two enzymes, deaminase and cosynthetase, in the construction of the tetrapyrrolic ring with its specific structural features. He was awarded the Wolf Prize in Chemistry along with Duilio Arigoni of Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zurich in 1989 for "their fundamental contributions to the elucidation of the mechanism of enzymic reactions and of the biosynthesis of natural products, in particular the pigments of life".