Iodine in inorganic and organic chemistry


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ABSTRACT FOR his Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution on December 3, Prof. Irvine Masson discussed "Iodine". After a reference to the important part played by Sir


Humphry Davy in the discovery of iodine (1812-1814) during his honorary professorship at the Royal Institution, the first half of the discourse reviewed the functions of this element in


Nature. As a component of rocks, minerals, soils, and dissolved salts, iodine is widespread but is exceedingly scanty. Even in its chief commercial source, the nitrate deposits of Chile, its


compounds are present only as minor impurities. It began to be significant, however, when organic life began. Certain marine creatures are rich in it, notably kelp, and in horny sponges


(bath sponges) and those corals the skeletons of which are horny, not calcareous. In them, the iodine is in the skeleton, as a well-defined organic compound, di-iodotyrosine, closely related


to the fairly simple compound tyrosine, which is a frequent constituent of proteins. Whether the organic iodine is useful to the vital processes of the cell-colony has not been ascertained.


The same substance is one of the two iodine compounds in the thyroid gland ; and although it there seems to have little or no direct physiological activity, it appears to serve as the


chemical forerunner of the other and more complex iodine compound, which the gland evidently synthesizes from it, namely, the hormone thyroxine. The second part of the discourse exhibited


recent discoveries which show that the carbon compounds of multivalent iodine present a much more extensive field than had been realized, wherein this element is seen to be classed less with


bromine and chlorine than with elements such as antimony, arsenic, phosphorus, and nitrogen, yet has specific characters of its own. Access through your institution Buy or subscribe This is


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THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Iodine in Inorganic and Organic Chemistry. _Nature_ 140, 1005–1006 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/1401005b0 Download citation * Issue Date: 11 December 1937


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