Differential enthalpic analysis of the thermal degradation of aromatic and heteroaromatic amino acids provides thermograms which are characteristic of specific amino acids (e.g. phenylalanine, tyrosine, tryptophan or histidine). Curve resolution of the resulting thermograms suggests that a minimum of three reactions are involved in the degradation (within the temperature limits of 500–620 [ddot]K) and provides TMvalues for each of these concurrent reactions.