Haworth and Hirst successfully synthesized vitamin C in the laboratory. This was the first vitamin to be artificially produced. Their breakthrough made it possible for vitamin C, or ascorbic acid as Haworth called it, to be produced cheaply on a large scale for medicinal use.

In 1937 the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was divided equally between Walter Norman Haworth "for his investigations on carbohydrates and vitamin C" and Paul Karrer "for his investigations on carotenoids, flavins and vitamins A and B2."