Called 365: Chem­istry for Life, the cal­en­dar links almost 250 days of the year to events — tri­umphal and triv­ial — in chem­istry, health, med­i­cine, energy, the envi­ron­ment and related fields. They range from Jan­u­ary 1 — which in 1907 saw the debut of the data­base that has fos­tered unprece­dented sci­en­tific dis­cov­ery — to Decem­ber 31 and a sci­en­tific law about those New Year’s toasts with cham­pagne. A mouse-click on the days in between revis­its Joseph Priestley’s dis­cov­ery of oxy­gen; the first suc­cess­ful treat­ment of dia­betes with insulin; George Wash­ing­ton Carver’s dis­cov­ery of hun­dreds of new uses for crops like peanuts; Marie Curie’s land­mark research on radioac­tiv­ity and much more.

ACS will hold a con­test dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2011 in which vis­i­tors to the site can sug­gest top­ics for grayed-out dates — or bet­ter top­ics for active dates. The con­tents of filled-in dates are mere sug­ges­tions and not nec­es­sar­ily the final word. Indi­vid­u­als whose top­ics are accepted for inclu­sion in the cal­en­dar will be eli­gi­ble for a draw­ing with prizes that include an iPad, an iPod Touch and an iPod nano.