Catalysis with Organic Molecules: A Success Story in Modern Catalytic Chemistry

✍ Scribed by Carsten Bolm

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 35 KB
• Volume: 346
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1615-4150
• DOI: 10.1002/adsc.200404222

✦ Synopsis

The chemistry of non-natural organic catalysts has a relatively short history. With the exception of a few substances, which were purely found by chance in the last century, the systematic work on this topic began in 1908. At that time Bredig and Fajans discovered the stereospecific catalytic effect of optically active alkaloids. In 1924 the author learned about these studies in Karlsruhe and began to focus on the problem of organic catalysis."

With these words (here translated from German) Wolfgang Langenbeck from the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin began his review on "Organic Catalysts" in 1966 (published in Fortschritte der Chemischen Forschung, Vol. 6, Springer Verlag, Berlin, p. 301). Why was it then decided -almost 100 years after the beginning of those studies in 1908 -that it was time for a focused issue of Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis on "organic catalysis"?

Undoubtedly, organic synthesis has matured during the past decades, and aspects of selectivity and efficiency of organic reactions have more and more become prime