- William Theilheimer
William Theilheimer (1914 –
14 July 2005 ), who was born inAugsburg , Germany, played a significant role in the history of what is now known aschemoinformatics .He received his Ph.D in organic chemistry from
Basel University , Switzerland in 1940. Being jewish, Basel provided a safe haven for him during theSecond World War and he stayed there until 1947 as Assistant to ProfessorHans Friedrich Albrecht Erlenmeyer (1900 - 1967) [http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mainzv/Web_Genealogy/Info/erlenmeyerhfa.pdf] , the son ofFriedrich Gustav Carl Emil Erlenmeyer (Emil Jr.) and grandson ofRichard August Carl Emil Erlenmeyer (Emil Sr.) [http://careerchem.com/NAMED/Anecdotes.pdf] . During his time there he compiled the data for the first two volumes of "Synthetische Methoden der Organische Chemie" published by S. Karger Verlag in Basel in 1946 and 1948. These built on the system ofConrad Weygand (Organic Preparations, Interscience Publishers, Inc., New York, 1945) for grouping similar reactions together, but used "Theilheimer reaction symbols" that summarised the most significant bond formed, the reaction type (addition reaction ,rearrangement reaction ,exchange reaction /substitution reaction orelimination reaction ), and the bond broken or fragment lost, as well as a specific reagent order based on theperiodic table .Later volumes were sponsored by a number of American chemical and pharmaceutical firms, most notably
Hoffmann-LaRoche , Inc., who provided library facilities at their site inNutley ,New Jersey from 1948 up to (and after) Theilheimer's retirement in 1981.His books were developed as modern
chemical reaction databases in the 1980s by MDL (Molecular Design Limited ) and ORAC (Organic Reactions Accessed by Computer) [http://www.hellers.com/steve/resume/p119.html] ; both of these companies were taken over byRobert Maxwell 's Maxwell Communications Corporation.Dr. Theilheimer received the
Herman Skolnik Award of the ACS Division of Chemical Information in 1987. [ [http://acscinf.org/docs/obit/TheilheimerWilliam.htm In Memoriam - William Theilheimer - ACS Division of Chemical Information (CINF) ] ]References
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