Naming after Names: Good or Bad? David W. Ball Rice University, P.O. Box 1892, Houston. TX 77251
A recent newsletter from the Scott Specialty Gas Company' stated that ".. .chemists are second only to physicians in personalizing rules, activities, and apparatus with the names of earlier workers.. ." and even cited the ancient alchemists naming gas traps "hains Marie" after Miriam of Alexandria, the first woman chemist of historic record. Indeed, the practice of namingthings chemical after peopleis a prevalent phenomenon in chemistry: a recent "Merck Index" lists2 over 450 different organic reactions in the section entitled "Organic Name Reactions", many of which have multiple names associated with them. Equipment is not immune: anv glassware catalog3 will list many pieces of equipment thay are named aft& people: ~ r l e n k e i e flasks, r \'irreux condensers, Griften heukers, Rurhner funnels, and ~ e b aflasks r are probably among the most widely known by experimenters. There are mathematical and chemical truisms named after people: Boyle's law, Charles' law, GayLussac's law, Graham's law, Fick's laws, Faraday's laws, Hund's rules, Maxwell's equations, and more. At the top is the fact that some of the chemical elements are named after people> and this seems to have been the trend in element naming for the past 30 years. Where do all these names come from? The names of the elements are chosen by the discoverers, and naming an element after a famed scientist seems to he a fitting way to honor him and/or her; in fact, this group of famed scientists makes up a clique more exclusive than the Nobel laureates. The names of the equipment probably come from the people who developed them or popularized their use. I t is the same with the reactions. A reaction is sometimes named after the person or persons who discovered. develoned. or ~ . . published. . . o.~ u l a r i z eit.d Question: Isn't all this "name-calling" confusing? 1 think so,especiallv tostudents. Naming an element after a person is fine;thereareso few elements (ina relative sense) that confusion can be kept to a minimum. With equipment, the number of names in use takes a slight jump. In some sense there is little problem, for even beginning chemistry students are exposed to certain "named" glassware. Some names become so familiar to students, in fact, that constant references are made to "Erlenmeyers" and "Dewars" and "Gooches" instead of "Erlenmeyer flasks" and "Dewar flasks" and "Gooch crucibles". In more advanced labs, the
names abound: Vigreux, Soxhlet, Kjeldahl, Morton, Fernhach, Beckman, and other names that people seem to throw around as if they were buddies. Gas laws can he a problem even for high school students. Whoamong usdid n(;t have troubleat first remembering if it n,as Hoyle or Chilrlej (or Gay-l.ussuc) who studied the volume versus pressure of a gas (or was it pressure and temperature? or volume and temperature? o r . . .)? Thrn there was Graham's law and Avopadro's hypothesis (which was pushed by Cannizarro, right?). Organic reactions can be particularly frustrating t o heginning organic students, for they are expected to know Lewis, Ziegler and Natta, Markonikov (all spellings!), Saytzeff, Woodward and Hoffmann, Grignard, Claisen, Hell, Volhard, Zelinsky, Wittig, and many others. I t is no wonder that organic chemistry can he so difficult for some students. They must feel as if they are memorizing a phone book, with addresses! T o he fair, there are many reactions that have descriptive names, and thus may be easier to remember. My personal favorite is the aldol condensation: two molecules of an aldehyde or ketone react to form an aldehyde-alcohol compound. What could he simpler? The overall ~ i c t u r of e chemistrv could he simplified in the future if, when naming something new, the labels were more descriptive than personal. "Electrolytic cells" is more descriptive than "voltaic cells" or "galvanic cells", named after Volta and Galvani, respectively. "Ferromagnetic inversion temperature" may he a more cumbersome title than "Curie temperature", hut it, too, is more descriptive. The descriptivetitle makes it much easier to remember what i t is, too. Admittedly, there are drawbacks to descriptive names; there are probably hundreds of "reduction reactions". But for the sake of all scientists and students, perhaps individual scientists should exercise more care when attaching a label to something new.
' ScoffTech Newsletter 1986, 8.4.
Windholz, M., Ed. "The Merck Index"; Rahway, NJ. 1976. See, for example. "Catalog 9 0 0 , Ace Glass Incorporated. 1984. *Ball. David W. J. Chem. Edvc. 1985, 62. 787.
Volume 63
Number 12 December 1986
1039
