A well-guarded brick building in Chicago houses what may well be the most priceless card index in the U.S. The index belongs to a young chemist named Martin H. Heeren. The cards bear strange titles.
Sample: "Michler's ketone, or C17H20ON2 or 4,4' Tetramethyl-diaminooenzophe-none."
Martin Heeren's job is huntingrare chemicals not sold by supply houses. U.S. chemists apply to his National Registry of Rare Chemicals to find missing ingredients for their experiments that it would take them weeks or months to concoct themselves—if they could make them at all. In its 16 months, the Registry has solved thousands of such...
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