Robert Downs Haworth
Robert Downs Haworth was an English organic chemist.
Life
Haworth was born in 1898 in Cheadle, then in Cheshire. His father was a school principal. He received his doctorate from Arthur Lapworth in 1922 at the University of Manchester and was a post-graduate student at the University of Oxford with William Henry Perkin Junior. From 1927 he was a professor at the University of Newcastle and from 1939 at the University of Sheffield.He researched the chemistry of natural products including resins, tannins, and the structure and synthesis of alkaloids.
A variant of the Friedel-Crafts alkylation, the Haworth reaction, is named after him. It creates naphthalene. The related phenanthrene synthesis, the Haworth synthesis, is also named after him.
In 1944, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1956, he received the Davy medal "in recognition of his distinguished contributions to the chemistry of natural products particularly those containing heterocyclic systems".