Born in London, his parents were Norman Macmillan Hinshelwood, a chartered accountant, and Ethel Frances née Smith. He was educated first in Canada, returning in 1905 on the death of his father to a small flat inChelsea where he lived for the rest of his life. He then studied atWestminster City School andBalliol College, Oxford.
His early studies of molecularkinetics led to the publication ofThermodynamics for Students of Chemistry andThe Kinetics of Chemical Change in 1926. WithHarold Warris Thompson he studied the explosive reaction ofhydrogen andoxygen and described the phenomenon ofchain reaction. His subsequent work on chemical changes in the bacterial cell proved to be of great importance in later research work onantibiotics and therapeutic agents, and his book,The Chemical Kinetics of the Bacterial Cell was published in 1946, followed byGrowth, Function and Regulation in Bacterial Cells in 1966. In 1951 he publishedThe Structure of Physical Chemistry. It was republished as an Oxford Classic Texts in the Physical Sciences by Oxford University Press in 2005.
TheLangmuir-Hinshelwood process in heterogeneous catalysis, in which the adsorption of the reactants on the surface is the rate-limiting step, is named after him. He was a senior research fellow atImperial College London from 1964 to 1967.
Hinshelwood never married. He was fluent in seven classical and modern languages and his main hobbies were painting, collecting Chinese pottery, and foreign literature. As an artist, Hinshelwood painted scenes in Oxford, as well as portraits of Oxford University people includingHarold Hartley,[10] his doctoral supervisor, andHerbert Blakiston, the President of Trinity College.[11] The portrait of Hartley is now owned by the Royal Society,[10] and that of Blakiston is owned by Trinity College, as are a number of Hinshelwood's other paintings.[12][13][14]
He died, at home, on 9 October 1967. In 1968, his Nobel Prize medal was sold by his estate to a collector, who then sold it in 1976 for $15,000.[15] In 2017, his Nobel Prize medal was sold at auction for $128,000.[16]
^Cullis, C. F. (1945). "Obituary: Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, Kt., O.M., M.A., D.Sc., F.R.S., 1897?1967".Journal of the Chemical Society (Resumed):X001 –X002.doi:10.1039/JR945000X001.
^Rowlinson, J. S. (2004). "The wartime work of Hinshelwood and his colleagues".Notes and Records of the Royal Society.58 (2):161–175.doi:10.1098/rsnr.2004.0050.PMID15209074.
