Paul Boyer, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, has devoted his entire professional career to the study of enzymes. His efforts as an enzymologist focused particularly on the exploration of oxidative phosphorylation, the process by which organisms convert energy acquired from food into the energy currency of living cells, adenosine triphosphate (ATP). He won the Nobel Prize in 1997 for his work on the mechanism of ATP formation. ATP is formed from adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and inorganic phosphate (Pi) in cellular organelles called mitochondria.

The pathway that synthesizes ATP is highly complex and has puzzled scientists for decades. Boyer developed a mechanistic model of how the various subunits of the enzyme ATP synthase cooperate like gears, levers and ratchets to produce ATP. The synthase enzyme was first identified in mitochondria in 1960. It was known that a series of mitochondial enzymes causes the breakdown of...