William Hobson Mills

William Hobson Mills FRS (6 July 1873 – 22 February 1959) was a British organic chemist.[1]

He studied chemistry at University of Cambridge and University of Tübingen and was appointed University Lecturer in Organic Chemistry, Fellow and Lecturer of Jesus College, Cambridge.[1]

Mills established the structure of the cyanine dye pinacyanol.[2]

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1923 and according to his membership citation was "[d]istinguished as an investigator and teacher in organic chemistry. Prepared, in 1910, the first, and only example of an optically active compound which contains no asymmetric atom, but owes its asymmetry to an oxime grouping. Solved in 1919-1921 the problem of the constitutions of the photographic sensitisers known as the isocyanines and carbocyanines. Since 1902 has published some 20 original papers. He has trained in chemical research a large number of collaborators whose names are associated with his own in the published papers." He won the Royal Society's Davy Medal in 1933.[1] Mills married the chemist Mildred May Gostling in 1903.