Norman Haworth

Norman Haworth (1883–1950) was a British chemist who advanced carbohydrate structural chemistry and shared the 1937 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on vitamin C.

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Edmund Hirst: British chemist who researched carbohydrates and vitamins, collaborating with Norman Haworth on vitamin C. Hirst worked with Haworth on the chemical synthesis of vitamin C.
Carbohydrate: A class of sugars, starches, and related compounds made primarily of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Carbohydrates were the central family of compounds Haworth investigated.
Haworth projection: A two-dimensional drawing convention for depicting cyclic sugars with substituents above or below the ring. This representation bears Haworth’s name and made cyclic sugar structures easier to communicate.
Carbohydrate chemistry: The study of the structures, reactions, synthesis, and biological roles of sugars and related compounds. Haworth’s structural investigations helped establish this field as a modern chemical discipline.
Walter Norman Haworth: British chemist Norman Haworth’s full name, sometimes confused with other scientists named Walter Haworth. This expanded name is a variant of Haworth’s own name, not a separate collaborator.
Monosaccharide: A simple sugar that cannot be hydrolyzed into smaller carbohydrate units. Haworth’s structural studies focused on simple sugars such as glucose.
Mutarotation: The change in optical rotation that occurs as sugar anomers interconvert in solution. Mutarotation reflects the ring opening and closing central to understanding sugar forms.
Polysaccharide: A carbohydrate made of long chains of monosaccharide units linked by glycosidic bonds. Haworth applied structural methods to complex carbohydrates, including polysaccharides.
Paul Karrer: Swiss organic chemist who studied vitamins and shared the 1937 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Karrer shared the 1937 prize with Haworth for separate work on vitamins.
Glucose: A six-carbon monosaccharide that serves as a major energy source in living organisms. Haworth used glucose to develop and illustrate cyclic structural formulas for sugars.