The Chemistry of Penicillin

This monograph is a detailed collection of the results obtained by some forty British and American scientific groups collaborating on investigations to determine the chemical structure of penicillin and a method for its synthesis. Several brief reports on the principal findings of these groups have appeared in various scientific journals, but this monograph is the only published report giving the experimental details of this investigation.

The book is divided into 30 chapters, which have been written by authors who were chosen because of familiarity with the subject assigned to them. Several chapters deal with the history and early investigations of penicillin, but the majority of the chapters treat the various methods of chemical degradation and synthesis used to determine the structure of the penicillins and the methods employed in the synthesis and attempted synthesis of penicillin. A number of chapters are also devoted to physical methods utilized in the study