Robinson, Robert (1886–1975)

English chemist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1947 for his research in organic chemistry on the structure of many natural products, including flower pigments and alkaloids. He formulated the electronic theory now used in organic chemistry. He was knighted in 1939.

Robinson's studies of the sex hormones, bile acids, and sterols were fundamental to the methods now used to investigate steroid compounds. His discovery that certain synthetic steroids could produce the same biological effects as the natural oestrogenic sex hormones paved the way for the contraceptive pill.

Robinson was born near Chesterfield, Derbyshire, and studied at Manchester. He first became professor at Sydney, Australia, in 1912, returning to the UK in 1915 and ending his career at Oxford 1929–55.

Robinson studied the composition and synthesis of anthocyanins (red and blue plant pigments) and anthoxanthins (yellow and brown pigments), and related their structure to their colour.

In his research on alkaloids he worked out the structure of morphine in 1925 and by 1946 he had devised methods of synthesizing strychnine and brucine, which influenced all structural studies of natural compounds that contain nitrogen.

During World War II, Robinson investigated the properties of the antibiotic penicillin and elucidated its structure. His methods were later applied to structural investigations of other antibiotics.