After receiving his doctorate, Noyes taught a year as an instructor at the
University of Minnesota. He was next a professor of chemistry at the
University of Tennessee, followed by seventeen years at
Rose Polytechnic Institute in
Terre Haute, Indiana (starting there in 1886). In 1903, Noyes was hired as the first "Chief Chemist" for the
United States National Bureau of Standards in
Baltimore, Maryland. His determination of
atomic weights led to "one of the most precise chemical determinations ever made", the ratio of the masses of
hydrogen to
oxygen (which he found to be 1.00787:16). With
H.C.P. Weber, he received the
Nichols Medal (chemistry) in 1908 for determining the atomic weight of
chlorine. In 1907 he became
chair of the chemistry department at the
University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, a position he would hold until 1926. In the process, he helped it to become one of the leading departments of
chemistry in the
United States. Despite his earlier work in analytical chemistry, Noyes is perhaps best known as an organic chemist. He was the first to prove the structure of
camphor definitively and studied rearrangements in camphor and related compounds. He also worked on "electronic theories of
valence, and the valence and nature of
nitrogen in
nitrogen trichloride" as well as developing "methods for the determination of
phosphorus,
sulfur, and
manganese in
iron". ==Editor==