Barton, Derek Harold Richard

Born Sept. 8, 1918, in Gravesend, Kent. English chemist. Fellow of the Royal Society of London (1954).

Barton graduated from King’s College of the University of London in 1940. Between 1949 and 1957 he taught at Harvard University, the University of London, and the University of Glasgow. In 1957 he became a professor of organic chemistry at the Imperial College of Science and Technology of the University of London. Barton was one of the founders of conformational analysis, and his principal works deal with the chemistry of natural compounds. He proposed methods of synthesizing aldosterone and tetracycline, and in 1960 he discovered the photochemical rearrangement of nitrites into nitroso compounds (the Barton reaction).

Barton shared a Nobel Prize with O. Hassel in 1969.