Derek Barton

Sir Derek Harold Richard Barton (1918 to 1998) was an English organic chemist born in Gravesend, Kent, who died in College Station, Texas. He shared the 1969 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Odd Hassel for developing the concept of conformational analysis, the idea that a molecule's three-dimensional shape, and specifically which conformation its atoms settle into, governs its chemical reactivity and physical properties. Barton's insight, first worked out for steroid molecules, became a basic tool of organic chemistry, and numerous reactions and reagents developed later in his career carry his name.