374 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1961 



stances it is interesting, at the end of about a century's growth — for 

 the science of organic chemistry and the organic chemical industry 

 have grown side by side in close association with one another — to look 

 at the present position of the science and to see whether future trends 

 are discernible. This involves not only consideration of the most 

 recent advances, but also a brief glance at the course of development 

 in past years ; for development patterns tend to repeat themselves in 

 science as elsewhere. 



NATURAL PRODUCTS 



Organic chemistry is usually defined as the chemistry of the carbon 

 compounds, but its original definition given by Berzelius just over 150 

 years ago was "the chemistry of substances found in living matter." 

 Although Berzelius's definition is inadequate insofar as a very large 

 number of carbon compounds are known which do not occur in living 

 matter, the older definition is worth remembering because it was 

 interest in the chemistry of living matter that initiated the science. 

 It is, moreover, fair to say that the study of substances found in liv- 

 ing matter has provided most of the stimuli to the advance of organic 

 chemistry throughout its history, and there is little reason to doubt 

 that this will continue to be the case. But the direct study of sub- 

 stances present in living matter — broadly described as natural prod- 

 ucts — which is now one of the dominant features of organic chemistry 

 has only become so during the 20th century. This is not, however, 

 surprising. Many of the products of living matter are of extreme 

 complexity, and they were for the most part far beyond the reach 

 of the early organic chemists. Even when the basic theory essential 

 for modern developments was laid down about a hundred years ago 

 the practical teclmiques available were too feeble to do more than 

 permit the study of some relatively simple examples, and the second 

 half of the 19th century was the period in which structural and 

 synthetic organic chemistry grew to the point at which a return to 

 the study of complex natural substances became practicable. It was 

 during this initial intensive phase of development that organic chemi- 

 cal industry also grew to be of major importance. Modern organic 

 chemical industry had its origin in the dyestuffs industry which be- 

 gan just a hundred years ago in this country with W. H. Per kin's 

 accidental discovery of mauveine in the course of an abortive attempt 

 to synthesize quinine in the laboratory, and was spurred on by work 

 such as that of Graebe and Liebermann on the dyestuff of madder 

 root which led to the synthesis of alizarin. It was thus born of 

 academic research and as it grew and prospered, so did the science 

 of organic chemistry. From those early days up to the present time 

 the industiy and the science have been closely associated; this has 



