Overton, Ernst

Pohorille, A. New, M.H. Schweighofer, K. Wilson, M.A., Computer simulations of small molecules in membranes, in Membrane permeability 100 years since Ernst Overton, Deamer, D., Ed., Current Topics in Membranes. Academic San Diego, 1999, pp. 49-76... 

The first chemical clue relating the structure of anesthetics to their potency was discovered in 1899 by a pharmacologist, Hans Horst Meyer, and an anesthetist, Charles Ernst Overton. Working independently, Meyer and Overton noted a strong correlation between the polarity of a compound and its potency as an anesthetic. They expressed polarity as the oil/gas partition coefficient, while anesthetic potency was expressed as the partial pressure in atmospheres. Figure 11.10 is a Meyer-Overton correlation for 18 anesthetics used on mice. Note that olive oil is used, and it has become the most commonly used reference solvent. 

Robert L. Phillips, Robin E. Ernst, Brian Brmnk, Natalia Ivanova, Mark A. Mahan, Julia K. Deanehan, Kateri A. Moore, G. Christian Overton, Ihor R. Lemischka, The Genetic Program of Hematopoietic Stem Cells, Science, 288 (2000), 1635-1640. 

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