From chemical documentation to chemoinformatics: fifty years of chemical information science

This paper summarises the historical development of the discipline that is now called ‘chemoinformatics’. It shows how this has evolved, principally as a result of technological developments in chemistry and biology during the past decade, from long-established techniques for the modelling and searching of chemical molecules. A total of 30 papers, the earliest dating back to 1957, are briefly summarised to highlight some of the key publications and to show the development of the discipline.