In 1956 the IUB appointed a Commission on Enzymes whose terms of reference were 'To consider the classification and nomenclature of enzymes and coenzymes, their units of activity and standard methods of assay, together with the symbols used in the description of enzyme kinetics'. Its members were A.E. Braunstein (USSR), S.P. Colowick (USA), P.A.E. Desnuelle (France), M. Dixon (UK), O. Hoffmann-Ostenhof (Austria), A.L. Lehninger (USA), K. Linderstrøm-Lang (Denmark), F. Lynen (Germany); corresponding members: F. Egami (Japan) and L.F. Leloir (Argentina). In 1959, on the death of Linderstrøm-Lang, E.C. Webb (UK) joined the Commission. Dixon was invited to be its Chairman and Hoffmann-Osterhof was Secretary. In the autobiographical notes that Dixon composed 1967-68 (A/2-3) he explained the background to the appointment of the Commission. 'It was becoming clear that the nomenclature of enzymology was rapidly getting out of hand, owing to the great increase in the number of known enzymes, the lack of any general system for naming them, and the custom that each discoverer of an enzyme had the right of naming it as he chose'. The task of bringing order out of this confused situation was in Dixon's words 'an unenviable and huge one'. Fortunately a list of known enzymes, arranged systematically in the order of the reactions catalysed by them, had just been prepared by Dixon and E.C. Webb for the book 'Enzymes' which was due to be published two years later (see Section D). The availability of this list greatly lightened the Commission's work. Nevertheless 32 sessions of the main Commission and 30 sessions of Subcommissions were needed over a period of five years. The Commission's unanimous recommendations were printed in book form and presented by Dixon to the Council of the IUB in Moscow in 1961 where they were officially adopted. Although Dixon was relieved to be able to turn to other things on the dissolution of the Commission he believed its work to have been of great value in creating order out of the threatened chaos in the subject. A small Standing Committee on Enzymes under E.C. Webb was appointed to consider criticisms and to keep the list up to date and this produced a revised version in 1964 which was also adopted by the IUB Commission of Editors of Biochemical Journals. Since then a series of revised enzyme lists have been produced as considered necessary by IUB or the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.