Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, 1897-1967

Cyril Norman Hinshelwood was born in London on 19 June 1897, the only child of Norman Macmillan Hinshelwood, a chartered accountant, and Ethel née Smith. His father was of Scottish origin, and once he remarked jokingly that some of his ancestors must have been well enough known because a street in Glasgow is named after them. His mother came from the west country. Several members of his family had artistic leanings but none appears to have had associations with science. As a small child he was taken by his parents to Canada, his father having some business there, and for a short time he was at a Montreal kindergarten, and later at a national school in Toronto for a few months. His health was not good, however, and at his father’s wish, his mother brought him back to England. His father died soon afterwards in 1904. Many years later, sailing back from Montreal down the St Lawrence River past Rimouski, he recalled with obvious emotion his childhood memory of how the pilot had been put off there. He went to Westminster City School, where there were two good science masters, H. F. Brand and E. B. Fisher, with whom he remained life-long friends. The Headmaster, too, E. H. Stevens, was scientist with wide interests who helped him a great deal. Here he won a Brackenbury Scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, but was unable to take it up immediately because of the war. From 1916-18 he worked at the Department of Explosives, Queensferry Royal Ordinance Factory, where his remarkable ability was quickly noticed. Before leaving, at a very early age, he became deputy chief chemist of the main laboratory. His work there on the slow decomposition of solid explosives by measuring the gas evolved stimulated his interest in the mechanism of chemical change, which was to be the main theme of nearly all his subsequent scientific research.