| Description | The papers include laboratory notebooks and working papers relating to Hinshelwood's early work on molecular reactions and gas reactions, 1919-1938. Most of this work was undertaken at the former laboratory shared by Balliol and Trinity College. There are also notes and reports of work on respirator design undertaken by Hinshelwood and his team for the Chemical Defence Board, Ministry of Supply, during the Second World War. Additional papers consist of certificates and records of honours and medals, reprints of scientific and non-scientific writings, photographs and press-cuttings, correspondence and manuscript material. |
| AdminHistory | Hinshelwood was born in London and educated at Westminster City School. He won a Brackenbury Scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, but was unable to take it up immediately because of the First World War and from 1916 to 1918 he worked at the Department of Explosives, Queensferry Road Ordnance Factory. In 1919 he went to Balliol to do the foreshortened postwar honours course in chemistry and he made his career in Oxford until his retirement in 1964. He was Fellow of Balliol, 1920-1921, Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, 1921-1937, and Dr Lee's Professor of Chemistry and Fellow of Exeter College, 1937-1964 in succession to F. Soddy. He was Senior Research Fellow at Imperial College, London from 1964 until his death. Hinshelwood's scientific research was in chemical kinetics and bacterial growth.
He was President of the Chemical Society 1946-1948 at the time of its centenary celebrations and President of the Royal Society from 1955 to 1960, his tenure including the Tercentenary Year. In addition to his wide participation in scientific life, he was a linguist with extensive interests in the arts, and in 1959 had the unique distinction of being at the same time President of the Royal Society and the Classical Association. Hinshelwood was elected FRS in 1929 (Bakerian Lecture 1946, Davy Medal 1942, Royal Medal 1947, Leverhulme Medal 1960, Copley Medal 1962) and in 1956 he shared with N.N. Semenov the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their researches into the mechanisms of chemical reactions. He was knighted in 1948 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1960. |