BOSS XI
July 21st, 2008 by Phil
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Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Belgian Organic Synthesis Symposium (BOSS) in Ghent. This included 4-5 lectures a day, poster presentations and of course sightseeing! The speaker list comprised big names, such as Baran, Carreira, Denmark, Du Bois, Fürstner, Hartwig, Shibasaki and Trost. I’m not going into detail about the lectures, as this seems to be covered in Tot. Synth. You can see the full programme here.
I can say as much: the conference was really great, if you ever get a chance to go there, do so! Everything was well-organized, most of the lectures were highly interesting, and so were the posters. In addition, Ghent is a beautiful town that is well worth a visit.
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Who do you think gave the best presentation?
I’ve enjoyed listening to Baran speak because he’s concise, eloquent and his chemistry is reasonably creative. By comparison, Boger was a bit too dry for my tastes.
Boger? Must have missed that one
I liked Fürstner a lot because he managed to make good stories of his syntheses. I also profited personally by noting some reaction conditions I might want to try in my own project. It would be hard for me to choose a clear favourite, though.
so this may sound ridiculous, but some of those younger “big names” kind of confuse me. Have they really contributed that much to synthesis to become a big name? I’ve heard Du Bois is extremely smart and that Baran is amazing as well, but I don’t remember seeing what was amazing in their work. Maybe it’s just me and my inexperience? I’ve been doing synthesis for 5 years and I’m pretty sure i’ve never used one of their papers. I’ve read a couple, but never used procedures from them. Am I just being stupid?
Being classified as a “big name” is just gossip, I don’t think they have certificates for this yet. Unless you would like to make one.
haha yes it is unofficial, but it’s definitely abused by some of those guys in the form of grants and publications. So as harmless as it may seem there are real world implications to who people perceive to be amazing. I’m not saying that they aren’t amazing though, I’m saying it matters. I would like to make a big name certificate though! I could give it to myself.