Meet the organic chemists engineering the signature molecules behind the world's most luxurious fragrances

"The work these technicians are doing is as meticulous as that of engineers layering silicon on a microchip. Their job is to produce trial batches of perfumers' scent formulas, typically as many as 250 a day, which will be evaluated, tweaked and made again until one version is finalized."

"For thousands of years perfume ingredients were simply distilled from flowers or extracted from plants. Then, in 1868, the first organic scent molecules were synthesized, opening a panorama of new olfactory possibilities."

"We are at the ideation, proof-of-concept, wacky-science stage of the process, says Paul Jones, director and principal scientist for International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF), another leading fragrance company."

At Givaudan's Experimental Lab in Manhattan, technicians create up to 250 trial batches of perfumes daily, refining them until a final version is achieved. The lab contains thousands of unique aromatic substances and 50,000 trial vials. The evolution of perfume began with natural ingredients, but since 1868, synthetic scent molecules have expanded olfactory possibilities. While perfumers are celebrated for their artistry, the industry's innovation relies heavily on chemists who develop new aroma molecules, as highlighted by IFF's focus on speculative scent modeling.

Read at www.scientificamerican.com