NEWS AND NOTES
Letters to the Editor
JAMES WHITNEY
PERRY
1901-1971
James Whitney Perry, Professor of Systems Engineering a t the University of Arizona, died Dec. 24, 1971. He was trained as a Chemical Engineer a t North Carolina State College (B.S. 1927, M.S. 1928), MIT (S.M. 1931), and the Technische Hochschule of Stuttgart and Berlin-Charlottenburg (1932-1933). His fields of principal activity have been synthetic detergents, scientific Russian, military propellants, documentation methods and nonnumerical applications of computers. His contributions to these fields have included fifteen hooks, more than 100 papers and several patents. During the thirties, he was a member of the research team that developed the first low-cost synthetic detergent a t the National Aniline Division of Allied Chemical. After devoting the war years to research on explosives at Aberdeen Proving Ground, he initiated his work for more efficient library and literature researching a t MIT in 1945. Later, while Director of the Center for Documentation and Communication Research at the School of Library Science at Western Reserve University, he designed equipment and methods for machine searching of encoded abstracts. In September 1960, he joined the faculty of the College of Engineering at the University of Arizona in order to carry forward pioneering work on communication systems design and theory. He was a past-Chairman (1949) and one of the organizers of the Division of Chemical Literature of the American Chemical Society, and a past President (1957) of the American Documentation Institute (now American Society for Information Science). He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Chemists. He was a member of numerous other academic, scientific, and professional societies and ofthe Chemists Club of New York.
Dear Sir: We do not enjoy the public displays of personality which “letters to the editor” constitute, hut since Professor Verkadel has chosen this means to express his views of our work (and our opinion)’ we feel obliged to rebut his remarks. We will he hrief. First, Rule A-42, like Rule A-41 (to which we specifically addressed ourselves), is not adequate to handle all types of spiro rings systems. Second, it is worthless to dissect Rule A-41 (or any other) in print. With adequate effort, one can, by comparison of our proposed rules with Rule A41, see point by point why Rule A-41 as a whole is inadequate. Third, there exist many examples of spiro systems, indexed in Chemical Abstracts Indexes, which Rule A-41 fails to handle. This is indeed unfortunate, because the Chemical Abstract Service has been lead into error by reliance upon faulty rules of nomenclature. We will be happy to supply, upon request, references to examples of spiro systems which defeat Rule A-41. Finally, and to our minds, most importantly, Professor Verkade’s remark that “. . .[the IUPAC Commission] has tried to give every Rule or Suhrule the consideration and the weight it deserved in the light of the time.” is the attitude, reflected in the IUPAC Rules, which we “maligned.” One of us (JER) has had enough working experience with IUPAC Rules to know that they serve only to handle known compounds, and they are not, by and large, anticipatory as they should be if they are to serve any practical purpose. We believe that our proposed rules more adequately serve the needs of an operational indexing system and the needs o f t h e users of indexes produced thereby. What we hope to generate by our efforts is an appreciation of the importance of a consistent, coherent, rigorous, and viable nomenclature of chemical compounds. J. E. RUSH and L. J . WHITE Department of Computer and Information Science The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio43210 (1) Verkade, P. E., J. Chen. Doe. 11(4), 261 (1971). (2) Rush, J. E., and White, L. J., J. Chem. Doe 10i3). 195-204 (1970).
Dear Sir: It has been suggested that you would be a person able to advise us regarding retention of CHEMICAL ABSTRACTS volume indices. Our library is becoming crowded although not critically so as yet. The question has come up again as to whether we could-or shoulddiscard CA volume indices. Can you give us some valid reasons for retaining CA volume indices after the collective indices have been puhlished? Any help you can give ns on this will he greatly appreciated. MARY YOUMANS Serials Librarian Western Carolina University Cullowhee, N. C. 28723 Editor’s Note: Although I have replied to the above, I thought readers of this Journal might want to reply on their own. Journal of Chemical Documentation. VoI. 12, No. 1 . 1972
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