William Hobson Mills

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William Hobson Mills (born July 6, 1873 in London , † February 22, 1959 in Cambridge ) was an English chemist ( organic chemistry , stereochemistry ). He also dealt with botany, especially blackberries . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " WHMills ".

Mills was the son of the architect William Henry Mills and studied natural sciences and especially chemistry at the University of Cambridge from 1892 (with top marks in the Tripos exams in 1897), was a student of Thomas Easterfield in Cambridge and from 1899 under Hans von Pechmann at the university Tübingen, where he obtained his doctorate in studies on halo-cumalic acids in 1901 . There he befriended another English chemistry student, Nevil Sidgwick . In 1902 he became head of the chemistry department at the Northern Polytechnic Institute in London and in 1912 he went first as an assistant (demonstrator) and from 1919 as a lecturer at Cambridge University. From 1899 he was a fellow of Jesus College and from 1931 professor of stereochemistry, a new chair created for him. In 1938 he retired.

He is known for research on stereoisomerism . For example, he demonstrated stereoisomerism in spiro compounds (Mills, CR Nodder, Journal of the Chemical Society, Volume 119, 1921, p. 2094) and compounds with restricted rotation (Chemistry and Industry, Volume 45, 1926, p. 884), which he subsequently examined in more detail. He also confirmed the theory of isomerism of oximes by Arthur Hantzsch and Alfred Werner (Mills, BC Saunders, Journal of the Chemical Society 1931, p. 537) , which has been questioned by many chemists . With EH Warren he showed in 1925 that the nitrogen atom in quaternary ammonium salts had bonds in the form of a tetrahedron (Journal of the Chemical Society, Volume 127, 1925, p. 2507)

During the First World War and in the period immediately afterwards he dealt with the synthesis of sensitizers in photography on the basis of cyanines , since deliveries from Germany had failed. This was of vital importance to the war effort in World War I, as the sensitizers developed in Germany in 1905 increased the sensitivity of the photographic emulsion from the conventional range (blue, violet, ultraviolet) to the red range, which was important for early morning reconnaissance flights. The military asked William Jackson Pope in Cambridge, who hired Mills to develop sensitizers like the pinacyanol used by the Germans .

In 1923 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society . In 1933 he received the Davy Medal . In 1942/43 and 1943/44 he was President of the Chemical Society.

In retirement, he expanded his collection of British blackberries and other members of the Rubus genus . It is now in the Faculty of Botany at Cambridge University and consists of 2200 specimens.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of William Hobson Mills at academictree.org, accessed on January 3 of 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Mills, William Hobson
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English chemist
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH February 22, 1959
Place of death Cambridge