Some pioneers of the kinetics and mechanism of organic reactions
Abstract
Sir Christopher Ingold played a key role during the late 1920s and through the 1930s and 1940s in getting the study of the kinetics and mechanism of organic reactions established as an integral part of organic chemistry. Such studies, however, had already been considerably pursued by many chemists, whose work has now largely been overlaid by later developments. The article highlights the contributions made between about 1895 and 1930 by James Walker, Arthur Lapworth, N. V. Sidgwick, J. J. Sudborough, K. J. P. Orton, and H. M. Dawson, with brief mention of others who helped to found this area of physical organic chemistry.