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Cyril Norman Hinshelwood
1897–1967 · United Kingdom · Born in the 1800s
Nobel Chemistry 1956
British physical chemist who made reaction mechanisms and chain kinetics quantitative, later extending them to bacterial growth.
Nobel-winning work
Pioneered the study of gas-phase reaction mechanisms, unraveling how molecules collide, activate and decompose. His kinetic analysis of chain reactions such as hydrogen combustion explained explosion limits and established chemical kinetics as a quantitative science.
Fields
Related topics
SN1/SN2 substitution, E1/E2 elimination
Compare concerted and stepwise substitution and elimination, and predict their rates, stereochemistry, and product distributions.
Reaction rate, reaction order
Measuring how fast concentrations change, and how the empirical order of a reaction is read from its concentration–time behaviour.