Frank C. Whitmore, nicknamed "Rocky", was a chemist who submitted the best piece of evidence for a carbocation mechanism in organic chemistry. A carbocation is an ion with a positively-charged carbon atom. ...

Frank C. Whitmore, who published as F.C. Whitmore, was born in 1887 in the town of North Attleborough, Massachusetts. Whitmore was educated and got his Ph.D. from Harvard University where he worked with E.L. Jackson. After graduating from Harvard he became a professor and taught at the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, and The Pennsylvania State University. While at the Pennsylvania State University Whitmore did his research on carbocations. The field of organic chemistry was struggling to explain how a compound with a double bonded carbon, an alkene, reacts with a halide compound. Whitmore worked on the findings of others and generalized the concept of molecules with a positively charged carbon atom, a carbocation, as an intermediate step in the addition of a halogen element. 1887 is a common year starting on Saturday (click on link for calendar). ... North Attleborough is a town located in Bristol County, Massachusetts. ... State nickname: Bay State Other U.S. States Capital Boston Largest city Boston Governor Mitt Romney (R) Senators Edward Kennedy (D) John Kerry (D) Official languages English Area 27,360 km² (44th)  - Land 20,317 km²  - Water 7,043 km² (25. ... Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and a member of the Ivy League. ... University of Minnesota, Twin Cities This article is about the oldest and largest campus of the University of Minnesota. ... Northwestern University is a private university which has its main campus in Evanston, Illinois, on a 240-acre (970,000 m²) campus along the shore of Lake Michigan. ... The Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (commonly known as Penn State) is a state-related land-grant university in Pennsylvania, with over 80,000 students at 24 campuses throughout the state. ... A carbocation is an ion with a positively-charged carbon atom. ... An alkene in organic chemistry is an unsaturated hydrocarbon containing at least one carbon-carbon double bond. ... A halide is a binary compound, of which one part is a halogen atom and the other part is an element or radical that is less electronegative than the halogen, to make a fluoride, chloride, bromide, iodide, or astatide compound. ... A carbocation is an ion with a positively-charged carbon atom. ... For the halogen light bulb, click here. ...

Whitmore would go on to publish his findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, 1932 Volume 54 Pp. 3274-3283. They were controversial at the time because many chemists, notably well known chemist Roger Adams a critic of Whitmore's, believed that a molecule like a carbocation would never be stable enough to exist. Nevertheless, Whitmore published these findings which today are accepted as the most logical explanation for the reactions in question. Whitmore also authored an advanced textbook in organic chemistry. The Journal of the American Chemical Society (abbreviated usually as , or JACS), is a peer-reviewed scientific journal, published since 1879 by the American Chemical Society. ...