Opposition science spokesman Kim Carr has paid tribute to Professor John Cornforth, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1975.
Prof Cornforth, 96, who died on Saturday, was awarded the world's premier science prize for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalysed reactions.
Senator Carr said Prof Cornforth remained the only Australian to have been awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry.
"Scientists contribute so much to this nation and to the world, yet too often they are our unsung heroes," he said in a statement.
Prof Cornforth was born in Sydney in 1917. He suffered from otosclerosis, a disorder that left him completely deaf by the age of twenty.
He graduated from Sydney University in 1938 and subsequently studied at Oxford. He attributed his lifelong interest in chemistry to his Sydney Boys' High School teacher Leonard Basser.
"Professor Cornforth's achievements are a mark of why we must honour our entire scientific community: students, teachers, researchers and science advocates," Senator Carr said.
