Party time

Author: egonw

_posts/2025-09-28-25-years-of-the-chemistry-development-kit.markdown

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+---
+layout: post
+title:  "25 years of the Chemistry Development Kit"
+date:   2025-09-28
+doi: 10.59350/4ce2c-fxh02
+tags: cdk jchempaint jmol openscience chemistry
+#comments:
+#  host: social.edu.nl
+#  username: egonw
+#  id: ...
+---
+
+Twenty five years ago the [Chemistry Development Kit](https://cdk.github.io/) (CDK) was founded. The Chemistry and Internet ([ChemInt2000](https://www.google.com/search?q=ChemInt2000))
+had just ended (it ran from 23 to 26 September) and my friend and I had taken the Amtrak night train from Washington to South Bend. At that time there
+were two leading Java applets for chemistry, [JChemPaint](https://jchempaint.github.io/) and [Jmol](http://jmol.org/). I had hacked Chemical Markup
+Language support into both of them, and [Dan Gezelter](https://chemistry.nd.edu/people/dan-gezelter/) (Jmol and [openscience.org](https://openscience.org/)),
+[Christoph Steinbeck](http://www.steinbeck-molecular.de/steinblog/) (JChemPaint), and me took the opportunity of being in North America
+to discuss if we could use a common code base. Chris' *compchem* had done something similar. Peter Murray-Rust, who had also attended ChemInt2000
+like me and Chris did not attend.
+
+I do not remember exactly, but I guess we must have met on the 28th and 29th? Maybe already on Wednesday. During this meeting we discussed a common
+data model (yes, Jmol used the CDK data model at some point) and somewhere during the meeting we wrote down a name for the project. There was the
+Java Development Kit, so this could be the Chemistry Development Kit. The name stuck.
+
+It has been an amazing journey and with a small grant in our group just behind us, and all the awesome things ongoing (new JChemPaint, various extensions,
+upgraded downstream tools), the CDK is alive and kicking.
+
+A huge congrats and thanks to everyone (and every company and organization) who contributed code to the CDK with this huge milestone. There are a few people
+that I want to particularly thank (see the AUTHORS file for all names): Chris, who in the late nineties made a difference with open source in chemistry,
+Dan, for Jmol and hosting this memorable meeting at Notre Dame University, Rajarshi Guha, who operated *CDK Nightly* for many years, well before Travis
+and Google Actions, Stefan, Miguel, Gilleain, and Christian, for many years of contributions to the CDK, and John Mayfield, the current
+CDK release manager.