History of the Harvard ChemDraw Project

Angewandte Chemie - International Edition

Volumn 53, Issue 42, 2014, Pages 11140-11145

  Evans, David A ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Chemdraw; computer graphics; molecular structures; structure representation

Indexed keywords

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING; CHEMICAL REACTIONS; CHEMISTRY; MOLECULAR STRUCTURE;

CHEMDRAW; GRAPHICS PROGRAMS; HARVARD; ORGANIC CHEMISTRY;

COMPUTER GRAPHICS;

EID: 84942100437     PISSN: 14337851     EISSN: 15213773     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201405820     Document Type: Review

References (31)

1. S. S. Shaik, P. C. Hiberty, A Chemist's Guide to Valence Bond Theory, Wiley-Interscience, Hoboken, 2008.
2. W. O. Kermack, R. Robinson, J. Chem. Soc. Trans. 1922, 121, 427-440. For an overview see:
3. D. O'Hagan, D. Lloyd, Chemistry World, 2010, 7(4), 54-57;
4. S. Alvarez, Angew. Chem. 2012, 124, 610-621;
5. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51, 590-600.
6. I was prompted to introduce this preamble to the Essay since anyone under the age of 50 years was not a practicing chemist in 1986, the year ChemDraw was introduced.
7. Leroy Lettering Sets were manufactured by Keuffel & Esser Co. (copyright 1950). These templates have been widely used for inked lettering on architectural and engineering drawings and maps.
8. The Chemist's Triangle has been marketed by Sigma Aldrich for at least 50 years. It was a mainstay tool of nearly every student of organic chemistry until the advent of ChemDraw. It has been informally called Fieser's Triangle and will be referred to in this way in this essay.
9. For an overview of this workstation see: Wikipedia, search term: "Xerox Star." See: http://www.digibarn.com/friends/curbow/star/retrospect/index.html.
10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox-8010. The Xerox Star System was technically known as the Xerox 8010 Information System.
11. WYSIWYG: Is the acronym for "What You See Is What You Get.".
12. S. W. Evans, A. B. Oberlin College, 1963. Significant teaching positions: Westridge School, Pasadena, CA; Westlake School for Girls, Holmby Hills, CA; Dana Hall School, Wellesley, MA; Belmont Day School, Belmont, MA; Montrose School, Westwood, MA.
13. "Macintosh and the 1984 commercial" may be viewed on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zfqw8nhUwA.
14. Kevin Maney, USA Weekend, January 28, 1984.
15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacDraw MacDraw graphics are displayed along with the available drawing tools. This was one of the programs supplied with the purchase of the Macintosh computer.
16. Stewart D. Rubenstein: Intern at SUMEX-AIM (programming) 1978-1979; intern at Hewlett-Packard Life Sciences Group, 1979-1980; B.S. Chemistry, Stanford University, 1980; M.S. Chemistry, Harvard University 1982; President, Cambridge Scientific Computing (later, CambridgeSoft Corp.) 1986-2006. E-mail: Stew@stewrubenstein.com.
17. LHASA is the acronym for "Logic and Heuristics Applied to Synthetic Analysis".
18. J. Brecher, Pure Appl. Chem. 2006, 78, 18971. There are several cases where two wavy lines for a tetrahedral carbon are recommended. See Section ST-0.4 Wavy Bonds.
19. Stewart Rubenstein, personal communication, April 17, 2014.
20. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserWriter. The LaserWriter was Apple's first postscript printer. It was introduced in March 1985 at a cost of $6995. This product was not actually delivered until later in the year.
21. Kevin Chapman, personal communication, April 22, 2014.
22. Stuart Schreiber, personal communication, April 25, 2014.
23. E. J. Corey, X.-M. Cheng, The Logic of Chemical Synthesis, Wiley, Chichester, 1989.
24. E. J. Corey, W. T. Wipke, Science 1969, 166, 178.
25. Stewart Rubenstein, personal communication, April 20, 2014.
26. Michael C. Rubenstein: A. B. Oberlin College, 1984; Executive Vice-President and Director, Cambridge Scientific Computing, Inc. (later, CambridgeSoft Corp.), 1986-2006; Chief Technical Officer and Director, CambridgeSoft Corp., 2006-2011; Senior Technical Leader, PerkinElmer Corp., 2011; Advanced Leadership Fellow, Harvard University, 2014. E-mail: michaelcrubenstein@gmail.com.
27. Clarissa Steinhagen, Managing Editor of Organic Letters, personal communication, May 27, 2014.
28. Katie Turner, Coordinating Editor of Journal of Organic Chemistry, personal communication, May 27, 2014.
29. Hans Keil, Director, Academic Market Segment, PerkinElmer Informatics, personal communication.
30. Cambridge Scientific Computing was incorporated in January 1986.
31. Craig Stephens, personal communication. See What's new in SciFinder: http://www.cas.org/products/scifinder/what-s-new-in-scifinder.