Barton, Derek

   b. 1918, Gravesend; d. 1988, Texas

   Chemist

   Derek Barton was one of the pre-eminent chemists of the century. He won the Nobel Prize for chemistry (with Odd Hassel) for a four-page paper which revolutionized his field of organic chemistry. He graduated from London’s Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1940 and continued to work in the same department for many years before posts at Harvard, Birkbeck, Glasgow, and then back to Birkbeck as Hofmann Professor of Chemistry until he retired at 60. He then worked in the USA and France, receiving many honours including a knighthood, the Légion d’honneur and the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun. His chief areas of contribution were conformational analysis, through which he changed the way chemists understand the shape and reactivity of molecules in three-dimensional space, steroids, natural product research and the significance of synthesis.

   See also: science

   MIKE STORRY