Derek Barton Quotes

For, with pure water the inversion of cane sugar scarcely proceeds and subsequently it required very thorough, difficult studies before this effect and its order of magnitude were established.

Every chemical reaction has a transition state.

Catalysts are the conductors who choreograph the chemical dance that results in the formation of new structures.

It turns out all molecular and biological systems have speeds of the atoms move inside them; the fastest possible speeds are determined by their molecular vibrations, and this speed is about a kilometre per second.

The detailed geometry of the coenzyme molecule as a whole is fascinating in its complexity.

The development of a rational view of the nature of catalysis was thus absolutely dependent on the creation of the concept of the rate of chemical reaction.

There's nothing colder than chemistry.

Molecular chemistry, the chemistry of the covalent bond, is concerned with uncovering and mastering the rules that govern the structures, properties and transformations of molecular species.

Nowadays, however, we recognize that simultaneously with the typical case of a chemical reaction a typical case of catalytic effect had been studied which constitutes a limiting case.

This simple idea served to provide information on the geometrical shape of reacting molecules, and I was able to make the role of the frontier orbitals in chemical reactions more distinct through visualization, by drawing their diagrams.

The distinction between the old and the new formulations consisting in the incorporation of the concept of the rate of chemical reactions is so great that it immediately asserted itself in the objective development of catalysis.

I started my scientific work by putting forward a hypothesis on the arrangement of atoms in nitrogen-containing molecules.

In 1967, I had formed a collaboration with Hermann Eggerer, then of Muenchen, and together, we solved the problem of the 'asymmetric methyl group' and applied the solution in some of the many ways that have proved possible.

Not every collision, not every punctilious trajectory by which billiard-ball complexes arrive at their calculable meeting places lead to reaction. ... Men (and women) are not as different from molecules as they think.

Our femtosecond snapshots can examine a molecule at discrete instants in time.

I tell my students to try to know molecules, so well that when they have some question involving molecules, they can ask themselves, What would I do if I were that molecule?

People don't realize that molecules themselves are somewhat hypothetical, and that their interactions are more so, and that the biological reactions are even more so.

It does not seem, however, that organic chemists were much worried about barriers to rotation in organic molecules in general at that time because there was no technique available to demonstrate the phenomenon experimentally.

I was also interested in formulating the path of chemical reactions.

This success led my theoretical group to the chemical reactivity theory, extending more and more widely the range of compound and reactions that were discussed.

Chemistry has been termed by the physicist as the messy part of physics, but that is no reason why the physicists should be permitted to make a mess of chemistry when they invade it.

You have to look at how chemistry develops.

The chemist, whose science is immediately concerned with the combinations of atoms, has rarely found it necessary to discuss their shapes, and gives them no particular forms in his diagrams. That does not mean that the shapes are unimportant, but rather that the older methods could not define them.

Much of my work in biology has been driven by my early training in chemistry. When studying a new chemical compound, the first and most important thing is to determine its detailed molecular structure.

We can track and see the production of single molecules, trace them and see how they assemble into structures.