Organic chemistry grew rapidly during the 20th century, as evidenced by the increase in the number of known organic compounds from approximately 12,000 in 1880 to one million in 1960. Today, this number has grown over tens of millions. The big bang of information technology starting at the end of the last century brought about revolutionary changes in chemical data handling methods. The enormous rise in the number of known chemical structures has been multiplied by the new virtual chemistry methods which erased barriers limiting chemists' imaginations. Applying fast and intelligent structure searching software programs has become vital for the competing pharmaceutical and biotech industries.
The molecule structures found in the examples of this document are drawn using MarvinSketch, the integrated structure drawing tool of JChem.