Sir William Jackson PopeBorn 31 Oct 1870; died 17 Oct 1939 at age 68. English chemist who broadened understanding of stereoisomerism. In 1899, he produced an optically active compound that contained an asymetric nitrogen atom, but no asymmetric carbon atoms, thus proving that the Van't Hoff theory applied to atoms other than carbon. By 1902 he had prepared optically active compounds centred upon asymmetric atoms of sulphur, selenium, and tin. Later, he even demonstrated that compounds without asymmetric atoms of any sort, could yet be optically active due to being asymmetric as a whole, through the influence of steric influence. Such behaviour had first been proposed by Viktor Meyer. During WW I, Pope worked on production methods for large quantities of mustard gas, a poison gas used in that war. |
