Walter Haworth's earliest research was influenced by his contact with William Perkin at the University of Manchester and involved a study of terpenes, a class of hydrocarbons often found in plants. The work for which he is best known, however, involves his studies of various carbohydrates, including a number of important monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides. Among his finest achievements was the determination of the molecular structure for glucose, perhaps the most important of all monosaccharides. The method he used for designating the formula of glucose and those of other carbohydrates is well known today to any student of organic chemistry as the Haworth formula. The 1937 Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Haworth in recognition not only of his work on carbohydrates but also for his elucidation of the structure of vitamin C and the first artificial synthesis of this important compound.

Walter Norman Haworth was born in...