From chemical documentation to chemoinformatics: 50 years of chemical information science

This paper summarizes 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 summarized to highlight some of the key publications and to show the development of the discipline.