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Photo: National Portrait Gallery — File:Derek-Harold-Richard-Barton.jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · Public domain

Derek H. R. Barton

1918–1998 · United Kingdom · Born 1900–1939

Nobel Chemistry 1969

British organic chemist who created conformational analysis; also known for the Barton reaction and work on natural-product synthesis.

Nobel-winning work

Barton showed that the three-dimensional conformation of a molecule — chair or boat forms of six-membered rings and the axial or equatorial positions of substituents — governs its reactivity. Conformational analysis instantly became part of the everyday reasoning of organic chemists, especially for steroids and other natural products.

Fields

Organic chemistry

Related topics

Structural and stereoisomerism (cis–trans, enantiomers)

Distinguish constitutional isomers from stereoisomers, then analyze geometric and optical stereochemistry using molecular connectivity and three-dimensional arrangement.

Electrophilic aromatic substitution, radicals, pericyclic reactions

Unify aromatic substitution, radical-chain chemistry, and concerted pericyclic reactions through their distinct electron-flow rules and selectivity principles.

Chemists in the same field

Kenichi Fukui (1918)John Warcup Cornforth (1917)Robert Burns Woodward (1917)William S. Knowles (1917)Donald J. Cram (1919)Robert Bruce Merrifield (1921)