Thiotimoline is a fictitious chemical compound conceived by American biochemist and science fiction author Isaac Asimov.
In 1947 Asimov was engaged in doctoral research in chemistry and, as part of his experimental procedure, he needed to dissolve catechol in water.
He feared that the experience of writing readable prose for publication (i.e. science fiction) might have impaired his ability to write the turgid prose typical of academic discourse, and decided to practice with a spoof article (including charts, graphs, tables, and citations of fake articles in nonexistent journals) describing experiments on a compound, thiotimoline, that was so soluble that it dissolved in water up to 1.12 seconds before the water was added.
His examiners told him that they accepted his dissertation by asking a final question about thiotimoline, resulting in him having to be led from the room while laughing hysterically with relief.
It also expounds a putative rationale for thiotimoline's behaviour: namely that the chemical bonds in the compound's structural formula are so starved of space that some are forced into the time dimension.
In his address, Asimov "describes" his first experiments with thiotimoline in July 1947, and timing the compound's dissolution with the original endochronometer, "the same instrument now at the Smithsonian".
Asimov laments the skepticism with which chronochemistry has been greeted in America, noting with sorrow that his address has only attracted fifteen attendees.
He then contrasts the thriving state of chronochemistry in the Soviet Union, with the research town of Khrushchevsk, nicknamed "Tiotimolingrad", established in the Urals.
Asimov says there is "strong, if indirect, evidence that the Soviet Union possesses even more sophisticated devices and is turning them out in commercial quantities".
Finally, Asimov describes attempts to create a "Heisenberg failure", to get a sample of thiotimoline to dissolve without later adding water to it.
He then concludes with some speculation about thiotimoline's potential applications as a weapon of mass destruction by deliberately using it to artificially induce hurricanes.
In Glen Bever's story "And Silently Vanish Away" a chemist with the unique ability to use psychokinetic catalysis to speed up difficult reactions is shocked by a lab explosion and the mixture he was working on gets changed.
In Robert Silverberg's 1989 story "The Asenion Solution", thiotimoline is used to send excess quantities of plutonium-186 to the end of time, where they will fall over the brink into anti-time and lead to the Big Bang.
A research note can be found in one location which makes reference to "thiomotilene crystals" and their "endochronic properties", which in turn strongly suggests motilene's name be derived from thiotimoline.