Chapter 4 — Further Reading

On IUPAC nomenclature

• International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (2013). Nomenclature of Organic Chemistry: IUPAC Recommendations and Preferred Names. Royal Society of Chemistry. The official rule book. Free versions of the 2013 recommendations are available online via IUPAC. Referenced in patent documents and scientific publications.
• Favre, H. A., and Powell, W. H. (2013). Nomenclature of Organic Chemistry: IUPAC Recommendations and Preferred Names 2013. Royal Society of Chemistry. The single-volume treatment with extensive examples.
• Traynham, J. G. (1985). Organic Nomenclature: A Programmed Introduction, 5th edition. Prentice-Hall. A workbook style, good for practice.

On common names and drug nomenclature

• World Health Organization, International Nonproprietary Names (INN), who.int/medicines/publications/druginformation/innlists/en/. Official WHO lists of generic drug names. Useful for understanding the naming conventions used internationally.
• U.S. Adopted Names (USAN) Council, a joint program of the AMA, APhA, and USP. Publishes guidelines for US drug naming.
• Hawley's Condensed Chemical Dictionary, 16th edition (2016). Wiley. The standard reference for cross-referencing common, trade, and IUPAC names.

On functional-group chemistry (content preview)

• Carey, F. A., and Sundberg, R. J. (2007). Advanced Organic Chemistry, Part A: Structure and Mechanisms, 5th edition. Springer. Treats functional-group chemistry in depth. Beyond the scope of this book but worth knowing exists.
• Smith, M. B., and March, J. (2007). March's Advanced Organic Chemistry, 6th edition. Wiley. The reference of choice for details of any specific functional-group transformation.

On petrochemistry and industrial scale

• Matar, S., and Hatch, L. F. (2001). Chemistry of Petrochemical Processes, 2nd edition. Butterworth-Heinemann.
• Olah, G. A., and Molnár, Á. (2003). Hydrocarbon Chemistry, 2nd edition. Wiley. Olah won the 1994 Nobel Prize for work on carbocation chemistry; this book is his treatment of the industrial side.
• Alper, J. (2022). Beyond Petrochemicals. Substack and Twitter essays on the next generation of bio-based and CO₂-derived feedstocks. Accessible journalism.

Online tools

• IUPAC Name Generator, ChemAxon's Marvin or ChemDraw: both can generate a IUPAC name from any structure you draw.
• NCI CIR Resolver (cactus.nci.nih.gov/chemical/structure): convert between common names, InChI, SMILES, and IUPAC.
• PubChem (pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov): extensive names and synonyms for every compound.

Practice recommendation

Spend 30–60 minutes going through Appendix H (the nomenclature appendix of this book) with pencil in hand. Name the example structures. Draw structures from names. Do this until it feels automatic — roughly an hour, not more.

Then do not spend any more time on nomenclature until a specific question requires it. Nomenclature is a support skill. The real chemistry is ahead.