The Tortuous Road to the Adoption of Katal for the Expression of Catalytic Activity by the General Conference on Weights and Measures (History) (Conference News‪)‬

Measurements of amounts, concentrations, or fractions of inorganic and organic catalysts are important in science and technology of many fields, not least for enzymes in laboratory medicine. In principle, the amount of an enzyme can be described by number of entities (unit, 1),amount of substance (unit, mole), or mass (unit, kilogram). For practical reasons, however, the catalytic effect of the enzyme is often chosen instead. The task then is to measure the increase in the rate of conversion of a defined chemical reaction, preferably of the first order, under strictly controlled conditions.