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John Ralph is a Professor of Biochemistry and the University of Wisconsin-Madison and, since 2015, a Distinguished Professor of the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. He obtained his B.Sc.-Hons in Chemistry at Canterbury University, New Zealand, in 1976, and his Ph.D. in Chemistry/Forestry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1982. Ralph’s group is recognized for its work on lignin biosynthesis, including delineation of the pathways of monolignol biosynthesis, lignin chemistry, and lignin reactions. The chemical/structural effects of perturbing lignin biosynthesis have been a focus, and extensions are aimed at redesigning lignins to be more valuable or more readily degraded. The group develops analytical methods and synthetic methods for biosynthetic products, precursors, intermediates, molecular markers, and cell wall model compounds. Ralph was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2005 and has been named by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the 10 most-cited authors in the plant and animal sciences every year since 2007.