Science desk
< January 27	<< Dec \| January \| Feb >>	January 29 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 28

Squaric acid history

TIL (via Dibutyl squarate popping up in the new pages feed) that there's something called "Squaric acid". I guessed by the name it wasn't naturally occurring (no alchemical Aqua quadrata or somesuch), but there's nothing in the article that directly tells me when it was first synthesised. And of course the first google hit for "Squaric acid" + history is: you guessed it, Squaric acid.

This tells me it might be 1976, but I'm not particularly keen to start a history section with "It was invented in 1976 because, umm, Google. I think." (I can't decide which is worse, this or extrapolating the date from the earliest volume number of the journals cite in the article.)

Any ideas for sources about its history? Thanks! User:Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 01:52, 28 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"squaric acid, isolated only in 1959".^[1] I guess our article should also mention that diketocyclobutenediol is a simplified systematic name of squaric acid. ^[2] --Lambiam 10:25, 28 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is the publication (doi:10.1021/ja01522a083), a letter to the editor, in which the synthesis was reported:

Cohen, Sidney, Lacher, John R., and Park, Joseph D. (1959): Diketocyclobutenediol. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 81:3480.

(Not the Sidney Cohen of LSD fame.) --Lambiam 10:43, 28 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]