Sir Derek Harold Richard Barton was an English chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the groundwork he laid for the determination of the three-dimensional shape of organic compounds. He shared the prize with a Norwegian chemist named Odd Hassel. Barton had a breakthrough while studying ‘conformational analysis’ or the ‘geometries of a molecule and its associated energies’ in 1950 when he suggested that the reaction rates of isomers were affected by the orientations of functional groups in space. Barton was one of the brilliant chemists at the heart of the movement that brought in a revolution in field of organic chemistry during the period 1940-1970. He did not restrict himself to any specialization in one field of chemistry but moved into other areas of the subject as well. He was gifted with the ability to draw out the general implications from the work of other chemists and bridged the boundaries of different fields of chemistry. He had the confidence to use his intuition instead of deductive logic in suggesting lines of reasoning which had remained incomplete until then. He carried out research on the oxidation of saturated hydrocarbons and on the way oxyradicals behaved. He developed an easier way to synthesize the hormone ‘aldosterone’ which was required for the treatment of Addison’s disease.