Abstract
FOR many years past organic chemists have been making and describing in detail thousands of new organic compounds: it was and is essential that a worker should know what had been done previously to his discoveries. The advent of Beilstein's handbook had a profound influence on progress when it appeared well over sixty years ago, for it enabled quick reference to the literature. Later it was supplemented by Richter, at first a private enterprise, but later taken over by the German Chemical Society, which created a considerable organization to keep it up to date. British chemical journals and Chemical Abstracts, like the corresponding American and German publications, have since contained a formula index on the Richter plan. Decennial indexes have been produced. Yet in spite of all, the magnitude of the task is so great that everything is decades out of date: the two long wars have contributed to the chaos. Now Dr. Faraday will make a fresh start—less ambitious, because it confines itself to the hydrocarbons, and presented in loose-leaf form so that an annual issue of new sheets will keep it up to date either by inserting new pages or substituting new matter for old.
Faraday's Encyclopedia of Hydrocarbon Compounds
Compiled by Dr. Joseph Escott Faraday. Vol. 1: C1 to C5. Pp. xxv + 47 + 92 + 40 + 104 + 103. (Manchester: Chemindex, Ltd., 1945.) £7 10s. 0d.
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ARMSTRONG, E. Faraday's Encyclopedia of Hydrocarbon Compounds. Nature 155, 467 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/155467a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/155467a0