Re: Who coined the word enantiomer?

I am afraid that I am only going to "nearly" answer your question. I cannot 
provide you with an exact name and date.

An "enantiomer" is one of a pair of substances whose molecules are mirror 
images of one another. If a molecule is very asymmetric (as most biological 
molecules are) then its mirror reflection is not exactly the same as itself. 
What is essentially the same substance comes in separate right-and left-
handed forms. Both forms have exactly the same chemical reactions with 
symmetrical molecules, and mirror image reactions with other asymmetric 
ones. (That is D-glucose reacts with L-alanine in exactly the same way that 
L-glucose would react with D-alanine, but D-glucose and D-alanine might do 
something different).

Some decades before we knew about the existence of right- and left-handed 
molecules, right- and left-handed crystals were already known. Quartz is a 
very common mineral, often found in crystalline form. Quartz crystals are 
very asymmetric, and come in separate right-handed and left-handed forms. 
These crystals have the property of rotating the plane of polarized light.

A man by the name of Naumann, writing in 1856 in the "Handbuch der 
theoretische Krystallographie", used the term "enantiomorph" to describe the 
separate mirror-image crystalline forms of quartz and similar minerals. He 
was, of course, writing in German, but the word was made up of Greek words, 
and was easily taken into English in an unchanged form. My authority for 
this, by the way, is the Oxford English Dictionary -- the long version that 
comes in about twelve heavy volumes.

By the 1880s, the analogy between asymmetric crystals and asymmetric 
molecules was well-recognized. Both were known to come in separate mirror-
image forms, and both were known to rotate the plane of polarized light. 
Occasional references started to be made in the chemical literature to 
"enantiomorphic isomers". 

From there, I get lost. 
"enantiomer" does not appear in the Oxford English Dictionary, or at least 
not in the versions and editions that I have ready access to.
A Mad Scientist colleague informs me that 
Webster's Dictionary on line provides a date of around 1929, but no 
actual name or source.
"enantiomer" is not used as an indexing keyword in "Chemical Abstracts", at 
least up until 1948.

I suggest that "enantiomer" is a fairly obvious and natural contraction of 
"enantiomorpic isomer" that may have crept fairly naturally into the 
technical language between 1880 and 1930. I would also suggest that this 
type of contraction is much more typical of North American than of British 
or Australian English. The fact that the word is known to Webster's 
Dictionary, but not to Oxford, would also tend to support a North American 
origin. And that is about the best I can do for you.