DEVELOPMENTS IN ALIPHATIC CHEMISTRY AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE COSMETIC INDUSTRY By W. H. DmI•F.N, M.SC., ^.R.•.C.* I keenly appreciate the distinction of being invited to address this meeting of cosmetic chemists, and if you will allow me an outrageous platitude right at the start, I do feel some degree of diffidence in accept- ing the honour for, as you may know, I am not, either by definition or in fact, a cosmetic chemist. If, however, 'you imagine the scientific industries and commerce of the country as a highly complex system of geared mechanisms, then your industry and mine have engaged at various points for a good many year.4 or to change the metaphor, the cosmetic and synthetic organic chemical industries have built up together, like the foundation, brick- work, decoration and furnishings of a house. The house could not exist without the construction, and no one would or could buy a house without the decoration and furnishing. No metaphor is perfect, and this house is like a skyscraper that presumably never will be finished. The build- ing and its appointment will develop and improve all the time . . . When I say the synthetic organic chemical industry, I infer particu- larly the aliphatic side of the busi- Chief Chemist, General Metallurgical and Chemical Ltd., London. ness. This is sometimes called petroleum chemistry, and it is per- fectly true that the profound devel- opment of the internal combustion engine, the invention of the auto- mobile and the flying machine, and the incidence of two catastrophic world wars, brought about a new industry of incredible dimensions and ramifications. Natural petroleum can be distilled, separated into frac- tions by solvents, and broken down and reassembled just as if its mole- cule were an elaborate jig-saw puzzle the bits can be reduced, oxidised, nitrated and so on to make a bewildering supply of fuels, lubri- cants and chemicals. Petroleum, however, is not the only source of the newer organic chemicals in fact, it is not at all an inexhaustible one. There are natural gases, consisting of simple olefinic and paraffin hydrocarbons and coal, the world deposits of which are expected to survive those of petroleum by thousands of years. Olefinic gases can be obtained by hydrogenating the by-products of coal, or from coke oven gases, and we can start from carbon itself and water to produce hydrocarbons, al- cohols and other substances by the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Alcohol, 126

INFLUENCE OF ALIPHATIC CHEMISTRY DEVELOPMENTS as one of the principal building blocks of aliphatic synthesis, is also widely obtained by fermentation of natural products, and with gradual exhaustion of mineral deposits, a vast extension of such sources is a very real ultimate possibility. Finally, though one hesitates to as- sociate it in any way with so refined an industry as cosmetics, there is sewage, which actually is worked up to produce high-grade hydrocarbon gases. When I was a boy at school, and as an undergrad with a yen for chemistry which, to me at any rate, does not seem exactly an epoch, one started learning organic chemistry with the fatty compounds. There were, of course, the industrial oils, fats and waxes, and the quick vine- gar process, but pupils and teacher• alike seem to race through a rather featureless series of aldehydes, ke- tones, primary, secondary and ter- tiary amines, and a most confusing mass of carbohydrates and sugars, all the excitement and importance being reached with the coal tar chemicals with their brilliant colours and thrilling explosions. The ter- penes, essential oils and synthetic perfumes seemed to occupy a sort of intermediate state. The Institute of Chemistry, as you know, has an excellent and rather stiff series of examinations for its associateship, and every now and then I rather enjoy, with a feeling of comfortable detachment, reading about the trials and ordeals of the young who submit themselves to their rigours. There is generally a sort of post-mortem examination, published by the examiners, usually in decidedly deprecatory terms. You know the sort of thing--" the criti- cal survey of classical polypeptide synthesis was very discouraging, and very few candidates correctly inter- preted the significance of the gamma diketone structure in question one". Well, only two or three years ago I noticed that an indm•trially minded professor had floored an examina- tion class, probably with their heads full of benzenoid structures, with the question: "Write an essay on the modem industrial applications of compounds with not more than two carbon atoms ". All this goe• •o indicate that a very profound change has taken place in recent years, and in that period the tonnage of industrial ali- phatic chemicals (excluding hydro- carbon fuels and lubricants) has begun to exceed that of the aromatic compounds. This was especially true, admittedly under a highly ab- normal econonay, in wartime Ger- many but it is also true of post-war conditions in the United States as regards tonnage, though not quite as regards value. The inception of the synthetic aliphatic industry throughout the world is considered to be the intro- duction of industrial acetylene in 1896, made by the indirect hydro- genation of carbon through the elec- tric furnace conversion of carbon and lime into calcium carbide. About the time of the first world war it was learned how to convert acetylene to acet al d ehyde by 127