Arthur Lapworth

Background

Arthur Lapworth was born on October 10, 1872, in Galashiels, Scotland. He was the son of Charles Lapworth, a geologist, and Janet Sanderson.

Education

Lapworth was educated at St. Andrew's and King Edward's School, Birmingham. He then studied chemistry at Mason Science College (later the University Of Birmingham), where his father was a professor of geology. In 1893 he went to London as a research student at the City and Guilds College, working on naphthalene chemistry under H. E. Armstrong and collaborating with Frederic Stanley Kipping in studies on camphor.

Career

From 1895 to 1900 Lapworth was a demonstrator at the School of Pharmacy, then head of the chemistry department of Goldsmiths’ College. In 1909 he left London for Manchester, where he spent the rest of his life, first as a senior lecturer in inorganic and physical chemistry (1913), as professor of organic chemistry, and finally as Sir Samuel Hall professor and director of laboratories (1922). He retired in 1935.

As may be seen from his appointments, Lapworth’s knowledge was unusually wide. Although his name is not associated with any single great achievement, he did steady, meritorious work for nearly forty years. In his early work on camphor, he recognized an intramolecular change, related to the pinacol-pinacolone rearrangement, which made possible acceptance of Bredt’s structure for camphor. A little later he began the study of reaction mechanisms, notably of cyanohydrin formation and the benzoin rearrangement, which entitles him to be regarded as one of the founders of modern “physical-organic chemistry.” He was one of the first to emphasize that organic compounds could ionize either actually or incipiently and that different parts of an organic molecule behave as though they bear electrical charges, either permanently or at the moment of reaction.

With the development of theories of valence based on the electronic structure of the atom, Lapworth was able to refine some speculations about “alternate polarities” into a classification of reactive centers as “anionoid” and “cationoid,” the charges being determined by the influence of a “key atom,” usually oxygen. In the mid-1920s, when Lapworth elaborated on these concepts with his colleague Robert Robinson, a controversy ensued with C. K. Ingold and his school, who were developing a similar approach to the problems of organic reactivity using a different terminology (“nucleophilic” and “electrophilic” instead of anionoid and cationoid), which eventually gained general acceptance. The controversy, although occasionally sharp, was fruitful; and Lapworth’s last paper (1931) bore Ingold’s name as a co-author.

Achievements

• Arthur Lapworth went down in history as a prominent scientist and respected professor, and also was considered a pioneer of the field of physical organic chemistry. His proposal for the reaction mechanism for the benzoin condensation is the basis for our modern-day understanding of organic chemistry.
  
  Lapworth was awarded the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 1931.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Memoirs and Proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, Volume 64

    (Lapworth's two papers on “alternate polarities” were publ...)

    1919

Membership

Lapworth was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1910.

• 

  Fellow

  Royal Society , United Kingdom

  1910 - 1941

Personality

Lapworth was a man of many interests, including music, climbing, and what might broadly be called "natural history." He was a reticent and modest person of nonconformist convictions, remembered by his students as friendly although rather remote.

Physical Characteristics: The last years of Lapworth’s life were clouded by a long and painful illness.

Interests

• music, natural history

• Sport & Clubs

  climbing

Connections

Lapworth married Kathleen Holland, whose brothers were eminent scientists themselves, in 1900. Thus, he, Frederic Kipping, and William Henry Perkin Jr. became related.

Father:

Charles Lapworth

Mother:

Janet Sanderson

Spouse:

Kathleen Holland

Brother:

Herbert Lapworth

brother-in-law:

Frederic Stanley Kipping

brother-in-law:

William Henry Perkin Jr.

teacher:

Henry Edward Armstrong

colleague:

Robert Robinson

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Volume 7
  1973