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Foreword
It is a great honor to write a foreword to the preeminent dictionary of named processes in the chemi-
cal industry. Named industrial processes have always been the poor relation of named reactions.
On my bookshelf, I have several books devoted to named organic reactions, including ones by J. S.
Gowan and T. S. Wheeler (1960), Alexander Surrey (2nd ed., 1961), and R. C. Denny (1969). The
Merck Index also has an excellent section on named reactions. For industrial processes, “Comyns”
stands practically alone, its only rival being the book by Kurt Wagner (1951), which has a much
broader brief and is now completely out of date. Yet industr ...