Top 4 Quotes & Sayings by Christopher Kelk Ingold

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British chemist Christopher Kelk Ingold.
Last updated on April 18, 2025.
Christopher Kelk Ingold

Sir Christopher Kelk Ingold was a British chemist based in Leeds and London. His groundbreaking work in the 1920s and 1930s on reaction mechanisms and the electronic structure of organic compounds was responsible for the introduction into mainstream chemistry of concepts such as nucleophile, electrophile, inductive and resonance effects, and such descriptors as SN1, SN2, E1, and E2. He also was a co-author of the Cahn–Ingold–Prelog priority rules. Ingold is regarded as one of the chief pioneers of physical organic chemistry.

You ask whether I am going over to the history of science... no, I am not as old as that. — © Christopher Kelk Ingold
You ask whether I am going over to the history of science... no, I am not as old as that.
Since it is proposed to regard chemical reactions as electrical transactions in which reagents act by reason of a constitutional affinity either for electrons or for atomic nuclei, it is important to be able to recognize which type of reactivity any given reagent exhibits.
[Flürscheim] was good at unanswerable arguments.
Reagents are regarded as acting by virtue of a constitutional affinity either for electrons or for nuclei... the terms electrophilic (electron-seeking) and nucleophilic (nucleus-seeking) are suggested... and the organic molecule, in the activation necessary for reaction, is therefore required to develop at the seat of attack either a high or low electron density as the case may be.
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