Henry Armstrong studied at the Royal College of Chemistry from 1865-7 and spent his subsequent career as an organic chemist at the Central College of the Imperial college of Science and technology until he retired in 1912. He spent the rest of his long life railing against the state of modern chemistry, saving much of his vitriol against (inter alia) the absurdity of ions, electronic theory in chemistry, quantum mechanics and nuclear bombardment in physics. He snarled at Robinson’s and Ingold’s new invention (ca 1926-1930) of electronic arrow pushing with the put down “bent arrows never hit their marks“.‡ He was dismissed as an “old fogy, stuck in a time warp about 1894.”‡ So why on earth would I want to write about him? Read on…
He did worthy (nowadays this could mean dull) chemistry on e.g. naphthalenes, but I want to focus on two articles from the period 1887-1890[1],[2]. Let me set the scene by reminding of an earlier post showing the structure of a bis(stilbyl)ketone, dated 1921. The two aromatic groups (yes, they really are such) are drawn in the manner we would nowadays draw cyclohexane. This practice in fact continued in texts and articles for perhaps 30 more years! Not much sign of electronic accounting there then! And by a professor at Imperial College no less, where Armstrong had been.
So when would you date the diagrams below? So called Clar† representations, originating from the 1950s? The one on the bottom below cites Clar and dates from 2010[3], but the one above it comes from Armstrong’s 1890 article!
Clar representations are used to count electrons (as coming in six packs). But there is little doubt that Armstrong’s use of a “C” (or inner circle, which is exactly what it is) means six as well. The evidence I present below, taken from his 1887 article.
We have a real mystery. Armstrong got so very close to a modern theory of chemistry. Was he asleep when Stoney named the electron around 1891 and Thomson discovered it in 1897? If only he had followed his own advice! Ah well, just as well he was ignored in the 20th century when he preached against it all.
‡W. H. Brock, “The case of the Poisonous Socks”, chapter 20, RSC Publishing, 2011, 978-1-84973-324-3 †Clar, E. The Aromatic Sextet; Wiley: New York, NY, USA, 1972.
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