Collective site for information on chemical nomenclature.

The Compendium is popularly referred to as the "Gold Book," in recognition of the contribution of the late Victor Gold, who initiated work on the first edition. It is one of the series of IUPAC "Colour Books" on chemical nomenclature, terminology, symbols and units and collects together terminology definitions from IUPAC recommendations already published in Pure and Applied Chemistry and in the other Colour Books.

In this edition of the Compendium IUPAC-approved definitions are supplemented with some definitions from ISO and from the International Vocabulary of Basic and General Terms in Metrology; both these sources are recognised by IUPAC as authoritative. The result is a collection of nearly 7000 terms, with authoritative definitions, spanning the whole range of chemistry.