Derek Harold Richard Barton
| Sir Derek Barton | |
|---|---|
| Born | Derek Harold Richard Barton 8 September 1918 Gravesend, Kent |
| Died | 16 March 1998 (aged 79) College Station, Texas, USA |
| Resting place | La Grange Cemetery, Texas |
| Nationality |
 United Kingdom
|
| Fields | Chemistry |
| Institutions | |
| Alma mater | Imperial College London |
| Doctoral advisor | Ian Heilbron |
| Doctoral students | |
| Known for | |
| Notable awards |
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Sir Derek Harold Richard Barton FRS FRSE (8 September 1918 – 16 March 1998) was an English organic chemist and Nobel Prize laureate for 1969.
Barton was born in Gravesend, Kent, to William Thomas and Maude Henrietta Barton (née Lukes).
He attended Gravesend Grammar School (1926–29), The King's School, Rochester (1929–32), Tonbridge School (1932–35) and Medway Technical College (1937–39). In 1938 he entered Imperial College London, where he graduated in 1940 and obtained his PhD degree in Organic Chemistry in 1942.
From 1942 to 1944 he was a government research chemist, from 1944 to 1945 he was with Albright and Wilson in Birmingham. He then became Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry of Imperial College, and from 1946 to 1949 he was ICI Research Fellow.
During 1949 and 1950 he was Visiting Lecturer in Natural Products Chemistry at Harvard University, and was then appointed Reader in Organic Chemistry and, in 1953, Professor at Birkbeck College. In 1955 he became Regius Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, in 1957 he was appointed Professor of Organic Chemistry at Imperial College. In 1950, Professor Barton showed that organic molecules could be assigned a preferred conformation based upon results accumulated by chemical physicists, in particular by Odd Hassel. Using this new technique of conformational analysis, he later determined the geometry of many other natural product molecules. In 1969, Barton shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Odd Hassel for "contributions to the development of the concept of conformation and its application in chemistry."
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