The English chemist Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood (1897-1967) was noted for his contributions to reaction kinetics.

Cyril Hinshelwood was born in London on June 19, 1897, the only child of an accountant who died in 1904. The boy was brought up by his mother. Hinshelwood won a scholarship to Oxford but was unable to accept it because of World War I. He became a chemist at an explosives factory at Queensferry, Scotland, and 2 years later he was appointed assistant chief laboratory chemist. In 1919 he entered Balliol College, Oxford, for the shortened postwar degree course. So sure was his grasp of chemical principles that his tutor, Sir Harold Hartley, recommended Hinshelwood for a fellowship at Balliol in 1920. A year later he was made a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. He remained there until 1937, when he was named Dr. Lee's professor of chemistry at Oxford, a post he held until his retirement in...