Walter Haworth

Walter Haworth (1883-1950), British chemist and Nobel laureate. Haworth determined the structure of simple sugars such as glucose. He also determined the structure of vitamin C, and was the first person to produce a vitamin synthetically. Haworth shared the 1937 Nobel Prize for chemistry with Swiss chemist Paul Karrer, who also studied vitamins.

Born in Chorley, Lancashire, England, Walter Norman Haworth earned a bachelor's degree from Manchester University in 1906. He earned doctoral degrees from the University of Gottingen in 1907 and Manchester in 1911.

Haworth's chief contributions concerned the study of carbohydrates, the substances that provide the body with energy. The three main types of carbohydrates are monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides. Haworth determined the molecular structure for glucose, probably the most important monosaccharide. In later work, Haworth eventually found formulas for disaccharides lactose and sucrose. Haworth then began studying the structure for ascorbic acid, a compound that had recently been discovered in cabbages and in oranges and which its discoverer, Hungarian-American biochemist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, thought might be identical to vitamin C, the anti-scurvy agent, that had also been discovered recently in 1932. Haworth defined the structure of ascorbic acid, which was vitamin C, and also synthesized it in his laboratory. Because of the compound's anti-scurvy properties, Haworth suggested the name ascorbic acid, which means not-scurvy acid. Haworth was knighted in 1948.