Photo credit: Nobel Foundation — File:Norman Haworth.jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · Public domain
Walter Norman Haworth
1883–1950 · United Kingdom · Born in the 1800s
Nobel Chemistry 1937
British organic chemist who determined the ring forms of sugars — the basis of the Haworth projection — and achieved the first synthesis of vitamin C.
Nobel Prize work
Haworth established the ring structures of simple sugars, showing that glucose and related carbohydrates exist mainly as six-membered pyranose or five-membered furanose rings, and devised the Haworth projection to depict them. His methods for methylation analysis of sugars clarified polysaccharide structures, and his synthesis of vitamin C enabled its first industrial production.
Fields
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.
Glucose, fructose, sucrose, starch, cellulose
Carbohydrates range from single sugars to giant polymers: the same glucose unit gives energy-storing starch or structural cellulose depending on how it is linked.