British Chemical Nomenclature

Abstract

IN this volume Dr. A. D. Mitchell, for twenty- three years assistant editor of the Journal of the Chemical society, sets out to do for British chemists what, since 1945, has been done for their American colleagues by the "Introduction"of Chemical Abstracts. Dr. Mitchell himself modestly describes his book as an attempt to expand into a monograph the lecture on "Modern Chemical Nomenclature" which Dr. Clarence Smith gave to the Chemical Society in 1936 ; but it may be doubted whether Dr. Smith could have done the task better than his colleague. Moreover, the book is no mere expansion of that lecture. Like the lecture, it deals with inorganic as well as organic nomenclature, and it derives its importance from the fact that it is an authoritative exposition of British practice. Hitherto this practice could only be ascertained laboriously and imperfectly from printed instructions to abstractors, which, until the issue by the Bureau of Chemical Abstracts in December last of its Brochure No. 4, "Principles of Abstracting", were several years out of date, and from footnotes, hidden, as Dr. Mitchell remarks, in the Journal of the Chemical Society. British Chemical Nomenclature By Dr. A. D. Mitchell. Pp. viii + 156. (London: Edward Arnold and Co., 1948.) 21s. net.