Archive for the ‘synthetic chemistry’ Category

Molecular Strain: Make me, I dare you

Saturday, April 26th, 2008 (340 Views)

Roald Hoffmann and Henning Hopf have a great new paper out in Angewandte titled Learning from Molecules in Distress. The paper is a romp through the field of "unhappy" hydrocarbon chemistry. It starts with a rationalization of the field of highly strained molecules, but quickly goes to the psychology of ...

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“Danishefsky 2-component reaction”

Monday, April 21st, 2008 (227 Views)

This JACS communication by Danishefsky's group is inspired by the well-known Passerini 3-component (isonitrile + aldehyde + acid) and Ugi 4-component (isonitrile + aldehyde + amine + acid) reactions. They ask the question if isonitriles 1 react with carboxylic acids 2. At room temperature, they do not, but under microwave ...

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Diaza[12]annulene: Would You have Known Better?

Friday, December 14th, 2007 (441 Views)

Don't piss this man off (Manfred Christl): The recent retraction of two papers regarding diaza[12]annulenes by Yamaguchi et al. and Shi et al. from separate groups have strengthened the argument for stronger peer review and more thorough literature review by authors. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.200704704 But anyone can be an armchair synthetic chemist and ...

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Let’s Talk About Quinine

Sunday, March 11th, 2007 (180 Views)

Quinine is one of the most important molecules in history (see the C&EN feature as one of The Top Pharmaceuticals That Changed The World.  Nowadays the closest most of us come to this wonder-drug is the bitter taste in those fantastic gin & tonics at the local bar.  Modern tonic ...

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Crystals

Wednesday, August 16th, 2006 (161 Views)

You ever have one of those days where you do something in lab that's totally routine, but then you encounter something that just makes you happy to be a chemist?  I had one of those today.  Most of the compounds I deal with are oils or liquids, but today I ...

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