Beilstein's Handbook of Organic Chemistry

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The Beilstein database is a database for organic chemistry , one of the largest factual databases in the world and a standard work in chemical literature . Today the database is operated by the Elsevier publishing house .

The manual was part of a German-language standard reference work on organic chemistry and was intended to substantially supplement the Chemische Zentralblatt, which was founded in 1830 . It was the German equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon chemical abstracts system. Since 1998 the editorial staff of the Beilstein has been dissolved.

Manual

"Der Beilstein", as the original handbook and today's database are also called, was created by Friedrich Konrad Beilstein (1838–1906) from 1880 to 1882 in a first edition as the "Handbook of Organic Chemistry" with approx. 15,000 compounds and approx. 2,200 pages published as a two-volume work. The second edition (3 volumes, 4,080 pages) was published from 1885 to 1889, and the third (4 volumes, 6,844 pages) from 1892 to 1899. The publisher was initially Leopold Voss and from the 4th edition Julius Springer .

When Beilstein was no longer able to do the enormous work on his own, in 1896 the continuation of the manual was placed in the care of the German Chemical Society , which initially published the third edition and from 1918 the fourth edition. The editor of the supplementary volumes and the preparation of the 4th edition was Paul Heinrich Jacobson , who had been supported by Bernhard Prager since 1899 . Prager had been the actual editor since 1907 (when the supplementary volumes were finished), as Jacobson was otherwise busy. He was supported by Dora Stern (in the editorial office until 1937) and Paul Schmidt . After the National Socialists came to power, Bernhard Prager was first dismissed as a Jew, and then other Jewish employees such as Dora Stern and Fritz Radt, who started a competing project at Elsevier in Amsterdam, before an international agreement was reached on the continuation of Beilstein after the war (Royalty-free due to the war) reprints in the USA had found great approval there. Prager's successor as editor was Friedrich Richter (1896–1961). As early as 1936, the fourth edition, which was far from complete at that time, comprised over 200,000 connections, compared to the approximately 70,000 connections that Beilstein had managed in its last (third) edition.

This 4th edition was referred to as the main work, and all subsequent supplementary works referred to its numbering ("system number"). The content of the books was made accessible via the Beilstein system (developed by Jacobson and Prager), which allows a clear allocation to individual volumes via structural features. The individual series are structured according to the period of the literature considered. The main work (H) deals with literature up to 1909, the first supplementary work (EI) from 1910 to 1919, the second (E II) from 1920 to 1929, the third (E III) from 1930 to 1949, the fourth (E IV ) from 1950 to 1959 and the fifth from 1960 to 1979. Important information was taken from the supplementary volumes but also from the latest literature, especially regarding the constitution and configuration of the connection, and the critical evaluation in the processing was always based on the principles of Beilstein according to the latest scientific standards. Each series comprises nominally 27 volumes (which are divided into several sub-volumes) depending on the structural class, whereby the division is the same for all series. From the 5th supplementary work onwards, it was published entirely in English.

In general, the following literature-based facts on organic compounds can be found in the "Beilstein":

  • Constitution , configuration , conformation
  • Occurrence and extraction from natural products
  • Manufacturing, Formation and Purification
  • Structure and energy quantities of the molecule
  • Physical Properties
  • chemical behavior (reactions)
  • Characterization and analytics
  • Derivatives

The information from the original literature was heavily compressed, compared, checked for errors and corrected if necessary.

The manual was later edited by the Beilstein Institute for the Literature of Organic Chemistry in Frankfurt, which was given the legal form of a non-profit foundation in 1951 (founder: Max Planck Society , under its then president, the chemist Otto Hahn ). Financing came entirely from the Beilstein's income and at the beginning of the 1980s 110 chemists were working there, evaluating around 2000 journals in a large number of even “remote” languages. As successor to Richter, HG Boit was the editor from 1961 to 1978 and Reiner Luckenbach from 1978 to 1996. The conversion to an electronic database was completed in 1988 and the manual was available online.

Until the production of the Beilstein in book form was discontinued in 1998, 503 volumes with 440,814 pages had appeared.

Database

The Beilstein has existed as a database since 1994 and when it appeared it contained around 6 million structures of chemical compounds. The database contains information from the scientific literature from 1771 to the present on chemical, physical, pharmacological and physiological properties of organic compounds as numerical values, keywords or as text entries.

A software called Crossfire was distributed to search the database . It included a graphical user interface in which chemical structures were drawn, according to which the database was linked to material properties and the like. a. could be searched. Crossfire was discontinued at the end of 2010 and replaced by the Reaxys program, with which Gmelin's Handbook of Inorganic Chemistry and Patent Chemistry can be researched together in addition to the Beilstein .

At the end of 2008 over 10 million structures and 10 million reactions with 37 million fact data records were listed. Each fact record is provided with a reference to the original literature. Over 2.0 million original articles were evaluated.

Historical works

Organic chemistry

Most of the older works are available online free of charge.

1st edition

2nd Edition

3. Edition

4th edition - Hauptwerk (H) , literature until 1909.

4th edition - 1st supplementary work (EI) , literature 1910–1919.

4th edition - 2nd supplementary work (E II) , literature 1920–1929.

4th edition - 3rd supplementary work (E III) , literature 1930–1949.

  • acyclic compounds: Volume 1/1 , to 1/3 (1958-1959) .- Volume 2/1 and 2/2 (1960-1961) .- Volume 3/1 and 3/2 (1961-1962) .- Volume 4/1 and 4/2 (1962–1963).
  • isocyclic compounds: Volume 5/1 to 5/4 (1963-1965) .- Volume 6/1 to 6/8 (1965-1967) .- Volume 7/1 to 7/5 (1968-1969) .- Volume 8 / 1 to 8/4 (1969–1970) .- Volume 9/1 to 9/5 (1970–1971) .- Volume 10/1 to 10/5 (1971–1972) .- Volume 11 (1972) .- Volume 12/1 to 12/5 (1972–1973) .- Volume 13/1 to 13/3 (1973) .- Volume 14/1 to 14/3 (1973–1974) .- Volume 15 (1974) .- Volume 16/1 and 16/2 (1974).
  • heterocyclic compounds: Volumes 17 to 27 of the 3rd supplementary work were published together with the 4th supplementary work E IV (see below).

4th edition - 4th supplementary work (E IV) , literature 1950–1959.

  • acyclic compounds: Volume 1/1 to 1/6 (1972-1975) .- Volume 2/1 to 2/3 (1975) .- Volume 3/1 to 3/3 (1977-1979) .- Volume 4/1 to 4/5 (1977-1981).
  • isocyclic compounds: Volume 5/1 to 5/4 (1977-1981) .- Volume 6/1 to 6/10 (1978-1981) .- Volume 7/1 to 7/5 (1981-1982) .- Volume 8 / 1 to 8/5 (1982) .- Volume 9/1 to 9/5 (1982-1983) .- Volume 10/1 to 10/5 (1983-1984) .- Volume 11 (1984) .- Volume 12 / 1 to 12/5 (1984) .- Volume 13/1 to 13/4 (1985) .- Volume 14/1 to 14/4 (1985) .- Volume 15/1 and 15/2 (1986) .- Volume 16/1 to 16/3 (1986).

4th edition - 3rd and 4th supplementary work (EIII + E IV) , literature 1930–1959.

  • Heterocyclic compounds: Volume 17/1 to 17/7 (1974-1975) .- Volume 18/1 to 18/9 (1975-1977) .- Volume 19/1 to 19/7 (1977) .- Volume 20/1 to 20/6 (1977–1978) - volumes 21/1 to 21/7 (1978–1979) - volumes 22/1 to 22/8 (1979–1980) - volumes 23/1 to 23/5 ( 1980) .- Volume 24/1 to 24/3 (1981) .- Volume 25/1 to 25/6 (1981–1982) .- Volume 26/1 to 26/6 (1982–1983) .- Volume 27 / 1 to 27/13 (1983–1985).
  • Register volumes 4th edition main work to 4th supplementary work H - E IV , literature up to 1959.
  • 10 volumes subject index (1991). 13 volumes Formula Register (1993).

4th edition - Fifth Supplementary Series (EV). Literature 1960–1979.

  • acyclic and isocyclic compounds: volumes 1 to 16 have not been published anymore.
  • Heterocyclic Compounds: Volume 17/1 to 17/11 (1984-1986) .- Volume 18/1 to 18/12 (1986-1987) .- Volume 19/1 to 19/12 (1987-1988) .- Volume 20 / 1 to 20/8 (1988–1989) .- Volume 21/1 to 21/13 (1989–1990) .- Volume 22/1 to 22/14 (1990–1991) .- Volume 23/1 to 23 / 13 (1991-1992) .- Volumes 24/1 to 24/9 (1992) .- Volumes 25/1 to 25/18 (1992-1993) .- Volumes 26/1 to 26/19 (1993-1995). - Volumes 27/1 to 27/44 (1995-1998).
  • Register volumes 4th edition Fifth Supplementary Series (EV). Literature 1960–1979.
  • Subject index Volume 17-19 (1989), Volume 20-22 (1990), Volume 23-25, Volume 26 and Volume 27 (1998).
  • Formula register Volume 17-19 (1990), Volume 20-22, Volume 23-25, Volume 26 and Volume 27 (1998).

See also

literature

  • Friedrich Richter: 75 Years of Beilstein's Handbook of Organic Chemistry . Essays and speeches. 1957 (online edition: ISBN 978-3-642-53216-0 )
  • Reiner Luckenbach: Do you know Beilstein? Chemistry in our time, 15th year 1981, No. 2, pp. 47-51, doi: 10.1002 / ciuz.19810150204
  • Beilstein Dictionary - German – English, for the users of the Beilstein Handbook of Organic Chemistry , Beilstein Institute, Frankfurt / Main, Springer Verlag, Berlin - Heidelberg 1984, ISBN 3-540-09378-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Brockhaus ABC Chemie , VEB FA Brockhaus Verlag Leipzig 1965, p. 162.
  2. ↑ Dora Stern. Born in 1881. Doctorate in chemistry. She survived World War II. Helmut Maier, chemist in the “Third Reich” , Wiley-VCH 2015, p. 84.
  3. ^ Luckenbach The Beilstein Handbook of Organic Chemistry - the first 100 years , J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci., Volume 21, 1981, pp. 83-86 indicates the growth of the known chemical compounds: 1883 approx. 20,000, 1899 approx. 75,000, 1910 approx. 140,000, 1940 approx. 400,000, 1960 approx. 1.2 million , 1980 approx. 5 million, of which around 90% are organic compounds.