
A 2006 screen shot, from a "The Human Element", using John Claxton's "Hu" symbol for a human, in a periodic table "big nature" sense of things.

A 2006 screen shot, from a "The Human Element", using John Claxton's "Hu" symbol for a human, in a periodic table "big nature" sense of things.

In human chemistry, human molecular symbols, or human chemical "symbols", refers to the use of “letter combinations”, e.g. Mx for male human (man), to represent, via the a symbolic nature, different types of human molecules, or people defined as chemical species, for the purpose of human chemical reaction theory, the way chemists in the early 18th century did the same for the elements, such as Si for silicon.

Periodic elements
In 1775, Torbern Bergman, in his A Dissertation on Elective Attractions, was using letters to represent individual chemical species generically A or B, and to represent combined species (bonded species), he was putting the letters adjacent to each other, in the form AB.

In 1814, Jacob Berzelius, supposedly (Ѻ), was the first to employ a one or two letter for each element; on this he said the following:

“The chemical signs ought to be letters, for the greater facility of writing, and not to disfigure a printed book.”
— Jacob Berzelius (1814), “Article”, Annals of Philosophy [4]

That year he proceeded to outline the main rules needed to generate such symbols, most of which are still used presently.

Human | Chemicals
In 1809, Goethe, in his Elective Affinities, generally modeled on the symbol use methods of Torbern Bergman (1775), assigned the following symbols: A for Charlotte, B for Edward, C for the Captain, and D for Ottilie.

“The moral symbols in the natural sciences—for example that of the elective affinities invented and used by the great Bergman—are more intelligent and permit themselves to be connected better with poetry, even connected with society better than any others, which are, after all, even the mathematical ones, anthropomorphic. The thing is that the former (the chemicals) belong with the emotions, the latter (mathematics) belong with the understanding.”
— Johann Goethe (1809), “Comment to Friedrich Riemer”, Jul 24

In 1987, Mirza Beg, in his New Dimensions in Sociology: a Physico-Chemical Approach to Human Behavior, referred to bonded associations of individual people: A, B, C, etc., which he refers to as chemical species or molecules, as he alludes, of form AB, BC, AC, AA, etc., as “dimers”, such as the formation of "close friends denoted by AB formed according to reaction", and and groupings or associations such as ABC as “trimmers”.

In 1995, Libb Thims was using the following formula (no symbols), in order to conceptually understand things, in terms of changes in free energy states:

Male + Female → Baby

In 2001, David Hwang assigned: M for Male, F for Female, and ‘M-F’ for couple.

In c.2001, Christopher Hirata, in his “The Physics of Relationships”, was uses the symbols of X = girl, Y = boy, and XY = paired relationship, calling the single boys and girls, i.e. men and women on his college campus, as “basic elements”, along with: Y2 for the "gay molecule", X2 for the "lesbian molecule", and X4Y for the "middle-Eastern polygamous molecule".


Some c.2002 scratch human molecule "symbol" notes, on the acknowledgement section of Matt Ridley's 1999 book Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23, wherein Libb Thims arrived at the use of Mx for male (man) and Fy for female (woman).

Some c.2002 scratch human molecule "symbol" notes, on the acknowledgement section of Matt Ridley's 1999 book Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23, wherein Libb Thims arrived at the use of Mx for male (man) and Fy for female (woman).

In 2001, Thims was using the following, were “s” was an attempt to defined humans as being in the “solid” state (which is not perfectly correct):

M(s) + F(s) → B(s)

In c.2002-2003, Thims was ruminating on the correct symbols to use for man, woman, and baby; the following being one set of notes:

Thims, in these scratch notes, shown above (right), had decided on using M for Male and F for female, along with an x/y subscript, so to eliminate possible confusions (e.g. M as short for Mega or Million; F short for Florine) subscripts "X" and "Y" based on the fact that the X and Y chromosome pairings on the 23 chromosome determine the sex of a person, in that if one is XY they are male and XX they are female. On first pass, this yields the symbol model My (male) and Fx (female)? This, however, did not "feel" right, for a number of reasons, so Thims reverse the order of the subscripts to yield: Mx (male), in the sense of "X-games", and Fy (female) in the sense of "gYnecology".

In 2005, Libb Thims, in his online “Human Molecule Symbol Choice Methodology”, building on his earlier 1995 work on human reproduction reaction theory, and on the work of David Hwang (2001), section outlined a section on uniform unambiguous notation choice for chemical symbol notation usage for people defined as chemicals.

In 2006, John Claxton, while working a new advertising campaign for Dow Chemical, came up the “Hu” as the symbol for a human. A number of popular “The Human Element” video clips and commercials resulted.

In 2007, Thims, in his Human Chemistry (Volume One), section “Human Molecular Symbols”, devoted two pages to a discussion of the need to used specifically assigned symbols to different type of humans so to avoid confusions, could confused also for either Boron or Baby, or in Hwang’s case F can stand for Florine or Female, etc., depending on context of discussion; some basic assignments of which were as follows: [2]

----------	------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------	-----------------------------------------------------	-----------------------------------------------------	----------------------------------------------------------------------
	Mx = Male (man) Fy = Female (woman) MxFy = Bonded couple (see: dihumanide molecule) Bc = Baby or Child	Fa = Father Ma = Mother Sb = Sibling Gf = Grandfather Gm = Grandmother Up = Paternal Uncle Um = Maternal Uncle Ap = Paternal Aunt Am = Maternal Aunt	Cp = Paternal Cousin Cm = Maternal Cousin Ne = Niece Nw = Nephew Bf = Boyfriend Gf = Girlfriend	Fc = Close Friend F = Friend Fd = Distant Friend Nr = Neighbor W = Work, job, or occupation Sc = School Si = Society

In 2019, Libb Thims, in amid his 5-day interview with Mirza Beg (see: Beg-Thims interview) was using the technique, during their discussion and sketch drawings, of using the last name of a person as the first capital letter, and the first name as the second smaller letter, e.g. Mirza Beg as BM and Libb Thims as TL as shown below:

as was posted and advertisement for the interview.

Quotes
The following are related quotes:

“The time may come when human affairs may be described no longer by words and sentences, but by a system of symbols or notation similar to those used in algebra or chemistry … then it may be possible, as Adams suggests, to invent a common formula for thermodynamics and history.”
— William Thayer (1918), “Vagaries of Historians” [3]

See also
● Chemical symbol notation
● Moral symbols

References
1. Symbols – HumanThermodynamics.com.
2. Thims, Libb. (2007). Human Chemistry (Volume One) (pdf) (§: Human Molecular Symbols, pgs. 33-34). Morrisville, NC: LuLu.
3. (a) Thayer, William, R. (1918). “Vagaries of Historians”, Presidential address prepared to be read before the American Historical Association, at Cleveland, Dec. 28 (Reprinted from the American Historical Review, January, 1919).
(b) Thayer, William R. (1921). “Vagaries of Historians”. Annual Report of the American Historical Association (pgs. 77-88, esp. pgs. 80-84). G.P.O.
(c) Adams, Henry. (1910). A Letter to American Teachers of History. (PDF). Washington.
4. Rabinovich, Daniel. (2016). “Berzelius and the Chemical Alphabet” (Ѻ), Chemistry International, 38:2, Mar 19.
5. Beg Interview Announcement (Apr 2019) – Hmolpedia Reddit.