NOMENCLATURE

WORDS ABOUT WORDS AUSTIN M. PATTERSON*

"^^EARS ago, chemical nomenclature was ·•- not a live topic in this country except

among dictionary makers and journal editors. Industrial men had no time for it; most research workers became inter­ested only when they had compounds to name. Many antiquated names appeared in chemical advertisements. All that is changing now, Industrial chemists and teachers engage in lively discussions about names. There are numerous nomencla­ture committees—more, apparently, than in any other nation [a complete list of their personnel appeared in C&EN, 26, 3026 ( 1 9 4 8 ) ] .

The AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY has long had its Committee on Nomenclature, Spelling and Pronunciation, with E. J. Crane as chairman. From time to time it has published in C&EN important reports, approved by the Council, such as those on hydrogen isotopes, the pronunciation of chemical words, organosilicon com­pounds, amino acids, and carotenoid pig­ments. Some of these reports originated in other groups but were approved by this main ACS nomenclature committee (reprints of these and other nomencla­ture reports are available through the Chemical Abstracts office; see the list in C&EN, May 28, page 2 1 8 1 ) .

The Committee on Nomenclature of the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, H. S. Nutting, chairman, was organized in 1946 and has been very active. In addi­tion to nine standing subcommittees on individual functional classes of com­pounds it has five advisory groups, com­posed of specialists in particular fields. Other ACS division committees and their chairmen are: Carbohydrate Nomencla­ture, M. L . Wolfrom (succeeding R. C. Hockett); Inorganic Nomenclature, W. C. Fernelius; Petroleum Nomenclature, Stewart S. Kurtz, Jr.; and Nomei. iature of Physical Chemistry, T. F. Young.

The National Research Council, as the representative in the United States of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry ( I U P A C ) , has in its chemical division a Committee on Nomenclature, of which the writer is chairman. This committee works mainly through subcom­mittees. The three standing subcom­mittees and their chairmen are: Bio­chemistry, H. B. Vickery; Inorganic Chemistry, W. C. Fernelius; Organic Chemistry, H. S. Nutting. (The personnel of the inorganic subcommittee is nearly identical -with that of the ACS Commit­tee on Inorganic Chemistry.) In addition there are two special subcommittees: Nomenclature of Steroids, with Byron Riegel as chairman; and Nomenclature of Silicones, Silicates and Related Boron Compounds, with Eugene G. Rochow as chairman (the last just recently organ­ized) . The NRC Committee on Macro-

molecules has a Subcommittee on Nomen­clature, of which H. F . Mark is chair­man. Recommendations of the subcom­mittees, when approved by the Commit­tee on Nomenclature, are submitted to the appropriate commissions of the IUPAC. The work of the American groups will be discussed later.

In 1947 rules on the nomenclature of natural amino acids and related sub­stances, prepared by a group headed by H. B. Vickery, were published in this country [C&EN, 25, 1364 (1947); / . Biol Chem. 169, 237 ( 1 9 4 7 ) ] . A British ver­sion [Comptes rendus, IUPAC, 14th Con­ference, London, 1947, p. 144] differed in some respects. These differences were harmonized by correspondence, except for rules 6 .nd 7, and seven rules were ap­proved [Comptes rendus, IUPAC, Am­sterdam, 1949, p. 187]. A text for rules 6 and 7 has now been agreed on by the NRC Subcommittee on Biochemical Nom­enclature and the British committee, and it is probable that the entire set of amino acid rules will be definitively adopted in New York this September.

In 1946 a report on the nomenclature of carotenoid pigments, prepared by the

XRC Committee on Biochemical Nomen­clature (J. Murray Luck, chairman), was published [C&EN, 2 4 , 1235 ( 1 9 4 6 ) ] . In 1947 the Commissions on the Nomencla­ture of Biological Chemistry and of Or­ganic Chemistry, meeting jointly, con­sidered chairman ICarrer's comments on this report and adopted a text of 11 rules [Comptes rendus, IUPAC, 14th Conference, London, 1947, pp. 138—43]. This text proved acceptable to the American comrnittçe except for rules 1 and 6, involving the definitions of "carote­noid," "lutein," and "xanthophyll/* A supplemental report on these points, pre­pared by H. H. Strain, has been approved by the NRC committees and will come before the two commissions in September.

A new matter with which the two commissions will deal is the report on steroid nomenclature, adopted at a con­ference sponsored b y the Ciba Founda­tion in London in 1950. It is signed by an impressive number of steroid authori­ties. For rliis country Byron Riegel and L. F. Fieser played an important part.

The biochemical commission will also consider reports on the nomenclature of vitamins b y B. C. P. Jansen [Comptes rendus, IUPAC, 15th Conference, Am­sterdam, 1949, pp. 189-91] and by a group in this country headed by Otto A. Bessey, working with the NRC biochemi­cal subcommittee,

Agenda of t h e other commissions will be discussed in a forthcoming issue.

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