Sir Derek Harold Richard Barton FRS FRSE[1] (8 September 1918 – 16 March 1998) was an English organic chemist and Nobel Prize laureate for 1969.

In 1950, Barton showed that organic molecules could be assigned a preferred conformation based upon results accumulated by chemical physicists, in particular by Odd Hassel.

In 1996, Barton published a comprehensive volume of his works, entitled Reason and Imagination: Reflections on Research in Organic Chemistry.

The newly built Barton Science Centre at Tonbridge School in Kent, where he was educated for 4 years, completed in 2019, is named after him.

[9][10] Sir Derek married three times: Jeanne Kate Wilkins (on 20 December 1944); Christiane Cognet (died 1992) (in 1969); and Judith Von-Leuenberger Cobb (1939-2012) (in 1993).