Christopher Ingold

This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Christopher Ingold is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:

Sir Christopher Kelk Ingold
Born October 28, 1893
Flag of England London, United Kingdom
Died December 8, 1970
Edgware
Residence London
Citizenship British English
Nationality British
Ethnicity White
Fields Chemistry
Institutions Imperial College London
University College London
University of Leeds
Known for Reaction mechanisms in organic chemistry, Cahn Ingold Prelog priority rules

Sir Christopher Kelk Ingold (October 28, 1893 - December 8, 1970, Edgware) was a British chemist based in Leeds and London. His groundbreaking work in the 1920s and 1930s on reaction mechanisms and the electronic structure of organic compounds was responsible for the introduction into mainstream chemistry of concepts like a nucleophile, electrophile, inductive and resonance effects, and such symbols as SN1, SN2, E1, E2. He also a co-author of the Cahn Ingold Prelog priority rules. He collaborated with his wife and fellow chemist E. Hilda Usherwood Ingold.

During his study of alkyl halides, Ingold found evidence for two possible reaction mechanisms for nucleophilic substitution reactions. He found that most secondary and tertiary alkyl halides underwent a two-step mechanism (SN1) while most primary alkyl halides underwent a one-step mechanism (SN2). This conclusion was based on the finding that reactions of most secondary and tertiary alkyl halides with nucleophiles were dependent on the concentration of the alkyl halide only. Meanwhile he discovered that primary alkyl halides, when reacting with nucleophiles, depend on both the concentration of the alkyl halide and the concentration of the nucleophile.

Sir Christopher received the Longstaff Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1951, the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1952, and was knighted in 1958. He began his scientific studies at Hartley University College at Southampton (now Southampton University) in 1913, obtaining his D.Sc at Imperial College, London in 1921. Following six years as Professor of Organic Chemistry at Leeds University, Ingold moved to University College London in 1930, where he was Head of the Chemistry Department from 1937 until his retirement in 1961. The department is today housed in the Sir Christopher Ingold laboratory, opened in 1969.

External links


Wikipedia content modification information:

  • This page was last modified on 6 July 2008, at 00:17.

Wikipedia Authorship and Review

Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.

Wikipedia Usage Guidelines

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Christopher Ingold".

The URL for this specific entry is:

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.