Some recollections of gap jumping

by Derek Barton

Nobel Laureate Sir Derek Barton discusses his scientific career, which embraced tenures as Professor at Imperial College, London for 20 years before becoming Director of Research at the CNRS at Gif-sur-Yvette, France for a decade, and now professor at Texas A&M University. Barton highlights his work in natural products synthesis and structure identification, his development of novel synthetic reactions, and his recent research in radical chemistry. His volume is laced with numerous anecdotes about many famous chemists and contains 49 photographs.

143 pages, Unknown Binding

First published May 5, 1991

About the author

Sir Derek Harold Richard Barton FRS, FRSE (8 September 1918 – 16 March 1998) was an English organic chemist and Nobel Prize laureate.

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 Ph.D. degree in Organic Chemistry in 1942. From then 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 the Chemistry of Natural Products, 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."

In 1958 Prof. Barton was Arthur D. Little Visiting Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 1959 Karl Folkers Visiting Professor at the Universities of Illinois and Wisconsin. In 1960 he was Visiting Professor at the University of California (Berkeley), spending much of his time with the W.H. Dauben Group. The same year he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 1949 he was the first recipient of the Corday-Morgan Medal and Prize awarded by the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 1954 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and the International Academy of Science, in 1956 he became Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; in 1965 he was appointed member of the Council for Scientific Policy. He was knighted in 1972 but chose to be known as Sir Derek only in Britain. In 1978 he became Director of the Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles (ICSN - Gif Sur-Yvette) in France.

In 1986 he became Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University and held this position for 12 years until his death.

In 1996, Professor Barton published a comprehensive volume of his works, titled Reason and Imagination: Reflections on Research in Organic Chemistry.

As well as for his work on conformation, his name is remembered in a number of reactions in organic chemistry such as the Barton reaction, the Barton decarboxylation, and the Barton-McCombie deoxygenation.

Barton died in College Station, Texas.