RuBP was originally discovered by Andrew Benson in 1951 while working in the lab of Melvin Calvin at UC Berkeley. Calvin, who had been away from the lab at the time of discovery and was not listed as a co-author, controversially removed the full molecule name from the title of the initial paper, identifying it solely as "ribulose". At the time, the molecule was known as ribulose diphosphate (RDP or RuDP) but the prefix di- was changed to bis- to emphasize the nonadjacency of the two phosphate groups.