Graham Farquhar facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Graham Farguhar
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Graham Douglas Farquhar
December 8, 1947 |
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| Employer | Australian National University |
| Known for | Plant biophysics research |
| Title | Senior Australian of the Year (2018) |
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Graham Douglas Farquhar (born 8 December 1947) is a famous Australian biophysicist. A biophysicist is a scientist who studies how living things work using physics. He is a top professor at the Australian National University. He also leads a special science team called the Farquhar Lab. In 2018, he was chosen as the Senior Australian of the Year.
Contents
A Life of Discovery
Early Life and Education
Graham Farquhar went to Wesley College and finished in 1964. After that, he studied science at two different universities. He earned a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree from the Australian National University in 1968. Then, he got another BSc with special honors in Biophysics from the University of Queensland in 1969. He went back to the Australian National University to get his PhD, which he finished in 1973.
Researching Plants
Professor Farquhar became a professor at the Australian National University’s Research School of Biology. He also became a main researcher for a special science center. This center focuses on how plants use sunlight to make food, a process called photosynthesis.
His work helps us understand how plants grow. He studies how tiny plant cells, whole plants, and even entire forests work. His research has helped create new types of wheat. These wheat plants are better at using water, which is very important for farming. His newest project is trying to find out which trees will grow faster when there is more carbon dioxide in the air.
Awards and Recognition
In 2014, Professor Farquhar and another scientist, Richard Richards, won the Rank Prize in Nutrition. They won this award for figuring out how plants use different types of atoms. This discovery helped create wheat plants that use water more wisely. They made this important discovery back in the 1980s.
Professor Farquhar received the Prime Minister's Prize for Science in 2015. This was for his amazing work on understanding photosynthesis. In 2016, he was given the Macfarlane Burnet Medal and Lecture by the Australian Academy of Science. The next year, in 2017, he won the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences. This is a very important international award for science.
On January 25, 2018, Graham Farquhar was named Senior Australian of the Year. He is also one of the most often quoted scientists in plant science journals. This means many other scientists use his work in their own research.
See also
- Global terrestrial stilling
- Farquhar Equations
