William Theilheimer (1914 – 14 July 2005), who was born in Augsburg, Germany, played a significant role in the history of what is now known as chemoinformatics.
[2] During his time there he compiled the data for the first two volumes of "Synthetische Methoden der Organische Chemie" published by S. Karger Verlag in Basel in 1946 and 1948.
Later volumes were sponsored by a number of American chemical and pharmaceutical firms, most notably Hoffmann-LaRoche, Inc., who provided library facilities at their site in Nutley, New Jersey from 1948 up to (and after) Theilheimer's retirement in 1981.
His books were developed as modern chemical reaction databases in the 1980s by MDL (Molecular Design Limited) and ORAC (Organic Reactions Accessed by Computer);[3] both of these companies were taken over by Robert Maxwell's Maxwell Communications Corporation.
Theilheimer received the Herman Skolnik Award of the ACS Division of Chemical Information in 1987.