In Memoriam

doi:10.1515/ci.2014.36.2.17

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In Memoriam

Published/Copyright: March 27, 2014

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From the journal Chemistry International Volume 36 Issue 2

Norman N. Greenwood 1925-2012

Norman Neill Greenwood was born in Australia. In 1948, after education at the University of Melbourne, he went to Cambridge University for his PhD studies on an Exhibition of 1851 Fellowship. He was a Harwell Research Fellow before he began teaching at the University of Nottingham, the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and the University of Leeds. At Newcastle, he became the first chairman of Inorganic Chemistry in England. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a foreign member of the French Academy of Science.

His IUPAC experience began in 1963, when he was elected to the Atomic Weights Commission. He attended his first meeting in Paris in 1965. In 1969, he was elected as the Commission chairman and served three terms. During his tenure, the Commission’s 1969 biennial report introduced: atomic weight uncertainties for all elements; footnotes and annotations to the atomic weights table; a table of radioactive nuclides with half-life values; a table of atomic masses of selected nuclides; and definitions for a number of terms.

The definition of atomic weight generated an interdivisional fight among IUPAC terminologists that lasted a decade until the Davos, Switzerland General Assembly in 1979. To mollify educators who argued for a change of the name of the quantity “atomic weight” to one that included the term “mass,” it was pointed out that atomic weight is not a mass, but a dimensionless ratio.

Norman’s chairmanship included the creation of a Working Party and subsequently a sub-committee on isotopic abundance. During his time, the French discovery of the two-billion-year-old nuclear reactors at the uranium mines in Oklo, Gabon, had an impact on atomic-weight values. As a lasting legacy to the Commission, Norman prepared the first technical policy document to provide continuity for decisions that would be made by future Commission members. He stated that atomic weights are consensus values, enunciated by uniquely qualified experts, and as such, are not subject to statistical concepts.

In addition to his Commission work, Norman also served IUPAC as President of the Inorganic Chemistry Division Committee and as one of the two chemist members of the joint IUPAC-IUPAP Trans-fermium Working Party to resolve priority in discovery (synthesis) of chemical elements with nuclear charge numbers greater than 100.

Norman Greenwood died on 14 November 2012

Henri A. Favre 1926-2013

Professor Henri Favre was born in Payerne, Switzerland. After graduating from ETH he moved to Canada and was appointed to the staff of the Chemistry Department at the Université of Montréal. From 1979 to 1984 he was dean of the university. His involvement with IUPAC started when he attended as an observer at the meeting of the Commission on the Nomenclature of Organic Chemistry (CNOC) in Boston in 1987. He was appointed an associate member in 1987, titular member in 1989, and was chairman of CNOC from 1991 until 2002, when the Commission was dissolved and its activities transferred to the Chemical Nomenclature and Structure Representation Division (Division VIII). He then became a member of the advisory committee of Division VIII.

During his service for IUPAC he was a member of working parties on the Basic Terminology of Stereochemistry (Pure Appl. Chem., 1996, 68, 2193-2222), Phane Nomenclature. Part I: Phane Parent Names (Pure Appl. Chem., 1998, 70, 1513-1545), Revised Section F: Natural Products and Related Compounds (Pure Appl. Chem., 1999, 71, 587-643; 2004, 76, 1283-1292), and Phane Nomenclature Part II: Modification of the Degree of Hydrogenation and Substitution Derivatives of Phane Parent Hydrides (Pure Appl. Chem., 2002, 74, 809-834). He was a co-author with G.J. Leigh and W.V. Metanomski of Principles of Chemical Nomenclature, Blackwell Science, 2001, contributing the organic and biochemical nomenclature. In the revised edition Principles of Chemical Nomenclature, a Guide to IUPAC Nomenclature, 2011 edition, RSC, 2011 he prepared the chapters on Substitutive and Functional Class Nomenclature and assisted with those on Name Construction and Deconstruction.

Perhaps his greatest contribution to the work of IUPAC was the revision of the “Blue book” on the nomenclature of organic compounds. At a meeting of users and IUPAC which resulted in the formation of Division VIII, it was highlighted that there was a need for the preferred IUPAC name. Henri’s solution to this requirement was to prepare an expanded and revised “Blue book,” including recommendations for preferred IUPAC names. Started in 2001, it is only now just about to come to fruition. The final volume, Nomenclature of Organic Chemistry, IUPAC Recommendations and Preferred Names, 2013, is over 1500 pages and is a fitting tribute to Henri’s work (RSC 2013, ISBN: 978-0-85404-182-4).

As a French-speaking Canadian, he was involved with French and French-speaking colleagues from IUPAC in the harmonization of French language chemical nomenclature between the francophone countries, following as closely as possible nomenclature documented in English by IUPAC in the “Blue book” and elsewhere.

In his work on the preparation of the “Blue book” he was involved in the naming of new chemical drugs registered in the WHO International Non-proprietary Name (INN) programme. He used this as an exercise in generating preferred IUPAC names.

Chemical Nomenclature has lost a master of the art. His wise council on nomenclature questions will be greatly missed.

Henry Favre died on 20 July 2013.

Published Online: 2014-03-27

Published in Print: 2014-03

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https://doi.org/10.1515/ci.2014.36.2.17