Abstract
BY awarding the Messel medal to Sir William Pope, the Society of Chemical Industry has paid a well-deserved tribute to one of Great Britain's most distinguished chemists. Moreover, the news of the award will be received with interest and satisfaction outside as well as within the boundaries of his own country, for Sir William, as president of the Federal Council and a former president of the Union Internationale, is well known to foreign chemists as the principal ambassador of their British colleagues. He held office from 1917 until 1919 as president of the Chemical Society, and from 1920 until 1921 as president of the Society of Chemical Industry. Sir William Pope, who was born in London in 1870, was one of Prof. H. E. Armstrong's pupils, having studied chemistry at the Finsbury Technical College and at the Central Technical College (now an integral part of the Imperial College of Science and Technology) at South Kensington. In 1897 he became head of the chemical department at the Goldsmiths' Institute, New Cross, and in 1901 became professor of chemistry at the Municipal School of Technology, Manchester; in 1908 he was appointed professor of chemistry and director of the Chemical Laboratories at Cambridge. Sir William's greatest triumphs in the domain of original research are associated with advances in stereochemistry, but other studies, for example, those with Dr. W. H. Mills on photographic sensitisers, are equally important and well known. Working in collaboration with Peachey, he succeeded in 1889 in resolving phenylbenzylmethylallylammonium iodide, an optically active compound containing an asymmetric nitrogen atom, and so demonstrated the quinquevalency of nitrogen. This extension of the scope of stereochemistry beyond the range of asymmetric carbon compounds was followed by the preparation of optically active substances containing asymmetric atoms of sulphur, selenium, and tin. In association with Barlow, he published work on the relation between chemical composition and crystalline form which led to interesting conceptions concerning the size and arrangement of atoms.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sir William Pope. Nature 129, 571 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/129571a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/129571a0