Henry Stephen

Henry Stephen OBE, DSc. (10 July 1889 – 6 July 1965) was an English chemist known for inventing the Stephen Reaction, a method of deriving aldehydes (R-CHO) from nitriles (R-CN).

Career Leonard Henry Nelson Stephen, later known as Henry Stephen, was born at 11 Dalton Terrace, Manchester, son of John Stephen, printer, and Mary Eliza (née Owen).

He studied chemistry under Dr Chaim Weizmann at Victoria University of Manchester. Along with Dr. J. E. Myers, Stephen contributed to the British World War I effort by developing a process to make mustard gas that was more rapid than the process being used by the Germans. In 1920, both received the OBE award for their work. In 1925 he published A New Synthesis of Aldehydes, known as the Stephen Reaction. From 1926 to 1954, Stephen was professor of chemistry at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

His widow Dora donated the lake and woodland behind The Kilns in Risinghurst to the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust in 1969, and it was known until recently as the Henry Stephen/C.S.Lewis Nature Reserve monikered in his memory.