Cyril N. Hinshelwood Biography

Cyril Norman Hinshelwood was born on June 19, 1897, in London, England, to Norman MacMillan Hinshelwood, an accountant, and Ethel Smith Hinshelwood. The family moved to Canada, but because of Hinshelwood's health, he and his mother moved back to England in 1904. His father died soon afterward. Although he received a scholarship to Balliol College at Oxford in 1916, Hinshelwood delayed accepting it to work at the Queensferry Explosive Supply Factory during World War I. Promoted to assistant chief chemist in 1918, his work on solid explosives sparked a lifelong interest in chemical kinetics.

Hinshelwood entered Oxford in 1919, becoming a fellow of Balliol in 1920 and a fellow and tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1921. During the 1920s he began to apply kinetic theory, the study of bodies in motion, to the chemical reactions that occurred in gases. In 1927 he began to investigate the interaction of hydrogen and oxygen. At certain pressure thresholds, the reaction became explosive. Following Semenov's conclusions about his experiments with phosphorus and oxygen, Hinshelwood applied the theory of the branching chain reaction, which posits that the products of the reaction assist in spreading the reaction so rapidly that an explosion results. The reaction of hydrogen and oxygen is so basic to chemistry that Hinshelwood's findings opened up several avenues of research in both organic and inorganic chemistry.

By the late 1930s Hinshelwood had shifted the focus of his research to decipher the mechanisms of bacterial growth with the tools of chemical kinetics. For the rest of his career, he elucidated key processes such as environmental adaptation and cell regulation by breaking them down into discrete chemical reactions. He unraveled the daunting complexities of the reaction that produces water. In recognition of this work, Hinshelwood shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Nikolay N. Semenov, whose ideas he had used in his explanation. Although his views were met with initial skepticism among biologists, they are now widely accepted principles in biochemistry. After decades of work as a professor, scientist, and college administrator, Hinshelwood retired from his chair at Oxford in 1964 and moved to London. However, as a senior research fellow at London's Imperial College, he continued his study of bacterial growth, while also serving as a trustee of the British Museum and chair of the Queen Elizabeth College in London.

A member of the Royal Academy, Hinshelwood was knighted in 1948. Apart from the Nobel Prize, he won the 1942 Davy Medal, the 1947 Royal Medal, and the 1962 Copley Medal of the Royal Society. He also held numerous honorary degrees from various universities. He was a member of the Dante Society and president of the Classical Association at Oxford. He was also president of the Modern Language Association, and knew eight foreign languages. Hinshelwood died in London on October 9, 1967.