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Chemistry is when ... it stinks!!

Friends, check this out! There is an interesting website about flavors of fruits . Better yet, the MC² group at Cal created a Smell Database . You can search chemicals by name. Upon selection of a chemical, you can learn about its properties, occurrence, and - you guessed it - its smell. You can't really smell it yet, but just you wait ...

Carbamates in Insecticides and Herbicides

Carbamates are frequently used as insecticides and herbicides and they are produced by reaction of an alcohol with isocyanates. The isocyanates are rather toxic because they readily react with all kinds of nucleophiles available in the body.
The insecticide SERVIN can be produced in this way by reaction of methylisocyanate with naphthol. During such production in a plant in BHOPAL, INDIA, a massive leak of methylisocyanate led to the worst chemical accident in history.



The Trade and Environmental Database (TED) gathers information on such accidents and you might want to take a look just how bad the accident at BHOPAL was.

Alexander Fleming and the Discovery of Penicillin



Nobel Price in Medicine 1945
Vitae
Vitae (Where Flemings picture came from.)
Another Mini-Vitae (Says something about the many honors that followed the discovery.)
Penicillin and Wartime Biomedicine (Class noted from a History course at SUNY.)