Werner, Alfred nomenclature

With the discoveries that led to the founding of coordination chemistry by Alfred Werner and others at the start of the 20th century, and the concomitant demise of constant valency theories, the utility of additive nomenclature once again became evident and was the nomenclature pattern used by Werner and his contemporaries in their publications. 

T he major purpose of this paper is to trace the development of nomen-clature practices in the broad area of coordination compounds from the near chaos before the enunciation of the coordination theory by Alfred Werner to the present day. A secondary purpose of this paper is to give an insight into the manner in which nomenclature principles develop and become standard practice. It will be shown how, once a sound basis for a system of nomenclature was enunciated, it has been possible to modify and extend practices to cover a rapidly expanding field of knowledge. 

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