THORPE, JOCELYN FIELD

(b. London, England, I December 1872; d. London, 10 June 1940)

chemistry.

After studying engineering and chemistry at King’s College and the Royal College of Science, Thorpe entered the University of Heidelberg in 1892; three years later he received a doctorate in chemistry. He joined the research group of William Henry Perkin, Jr., at the University of Manchester, where he became lecturer in organic chemistry. In 1908 he was elected to the Royal Society and was its Sorby Research Fellow from 1909 to 1913. Subsequently he was appointed to the chair of organic chemistry at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London, a post he held until his retirement in 1938. He served on many government and industrial committees and was president of the Chemical Society from 1928 to 1931 and of the Institute of Chemistry from 1933 to 1936. He was knighted in 1939.

Thorpe’s first researches in organic chemistry dealt with the synthesis of polybasic acids. He contributed an important method of preparation for dibasic acids, when he found that sodiocyanoacetic ester condenses with the cyanohydrins of aldehydes and ketones to form products that hydrolyze into substituted succinic acids. With Perkin, Thorpe investigated the structure of camphor and related compounds. They synthesized two oxidation products of camphor, camphoronic acid (1897) and camphoric acid (1903), and confirmed the formulas of Bredt for camphor and these acid derivatives. They also confirmed Baeyer’s structures for carone and the caronic acids by synthesizing them in 1899.

Thorpe’s most valuable contribution to chemistry was his study of the formation and reactions of imino compounds, resulting from his 1904 discovery of the condensation reaction of sodiocyanoacetic ester with the cyano group. He also found imino compounds to be the product of the condensation of nitrites with each other; dinitriles condense intramolecularly to form many new imino compounds.

In 1911 Thorpe established the existence of keto-enol tautomerism between an open chain compound and its cyclic isomer, while in 1919 he and C. K. Ingold proved the presence of “intraannular tautomerism” in bridged rings:

With Ingold, Thorpe collaborated from 1914 to 1928 on a study of valency and chemical bonding; they were the first to propose that the valency angles of the carbon atom may depart from the regular tetrahedral angles in the formation of highly substituted organic compounds.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Thorpe wrote two books on dyes and colors: The Synthetic Dyestuffs and the IntermediateProducts From Which They Are Derived (London, 1905), written with John C. Cain; and Synthetic Colouring Matters: Vat Colours (London, 1923), written with Christopher K. Ingold. With Martha A. Whiteley, Thorpe wrote A Student’s Manual of Organic Chemical Analysis (London, 1925) and also edited the supplementary vols. (1934–1936) and the 4th ed. (1937) of T. E. Thorpe’s Dictionary of Applied Chemistry.

Thorpe’s important papers include “Synthesis of i-Camphoronic Acid,” in Journal of the Chemical Society, 71 (1897), 1169–1194, written with W. H. Perkin, Jr.; “The Formation and Reactions of Imino Compounds,” in three parts, ibid., 85 (1904), 1726–1761, written with H. Baron and F. Remfry; 89 (1906), 1906–1935, written with E. Atkinson; 93 (1908), 165–187, written with C. Moore; “The Formation and Stability of Spiro Compounds,” ibid., 115 (1919), 320–383, written with C. K. Ingold; “Ring-Chain Tautomerism,” ibid., 121 (1922), 1765–1789, written with C. K. Ingold and E. Perren; “The Chemistry of Polycyclic Structures in Relation to Their Homocyclic Unsaturated Isomerides,” ibid. (1922), 128–159, written with C. K. Ingold and E. Farmer; and “The Hypothesis of Valency Deflection,” ibid. (1928), 1318–1321, written with C. K. Ingold.

II. Secondary Literature. On Thorpe’s life and work, with many references to his papers, see G. A. R. Kon and R. P. Linstead, “Sir Jocelyn Field Thorpe,” in Journal of the Chemical Society (1941), 444–464, repr. in Alexander Findlay and William Hobson Mills, eds., British Chemists (London, 1947), 369–401.

Albert B. Costa