โ Scribed by Prof. Stefan Matile; Prof. James Canary; Prof. Emeritus Nobuyuki Harada; Prof. John Caldwell
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
We are happy to publish this special issue dedicated to Professor Nina Berova. It not only celebrates her receiving the 2007 Chirality Medal award but also appreciates and acknowledges four decades of dedication to the promotion of organic stereochemistry and chiroptical spectroscopy in the broadest sense. Without going into details, Nina started her academic career in Bulgaria before moving to Columbia University in New York some twenty years ago. Over the years, Nina has contributed significantly to advancement and broader application of organic stereochemistry and chiroptical, particularly circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy from both practical and theoretical points of view. Highlights include ECCD methods development with emphasis on microscale protocols, CD reporter groups including elegant molecular tweezers, theoretical simulation and fluorescence detection. Nina's uncompromising, passionate commitment to absolutely outstanding service to the community is legendary-as editor, organizer, advisor, teacher and longstanding friend to many of us. Early on, she co-organized the First International Conference on CD in Sofia, the prototype of today's international symposia on chiroptical spectroscopy. Since then, Nina has played an active role in many occasions, acting for example also as co-organizer of the 5th CD conference (Colorado, 1993) and the 16th ISCD (New York, 2004). Nina has been co-editor of Chirality since 1999. She is also the co-editor and co-author of the by now classical book ''Circular Dichroism: Interpretation and Applications'' (Wiley). Many thanks for all that, Nina!
The overwhelming response to our invitations to contribute to this Special Issue illustrates the appreciation of Nina's leadership in the community better than all words of praise. We are delighted to present more than forty contributions from top-quality groups in more than twelve countries. The many topics covered reflect perfectly both Nina's broad interests and involvement and the scope of Chirality. Living up to the occasion, the special issue is centered around a rich and diverse collection on CD spectroscopy. Topics covered reach from computational predictions of CD spectra of the benzene chromophore reported by Pescitelli and coworkers to DNA binding studies by Corradini. CD spectroscopy of G-quartets, planar chromophores in dichromophoric molecules, diglycosyl dichalcogenides, distorted tetracyanoanthraquinonedimethanes and, in an excellent review, chiral molecular self-assemblies is covered in contributions from the groups of Gray, Botkus, Kurtan, Inoue, Spada and Gottarelli. Related methods covered include VCD described by the Monde and coworkers using phenyl glycosides as examples. Chiroptical luminescence is described by Hopkins, chiral NMR discrimination by Wenzel and optical rotation by Vaccaro, focusing on solvent and conformational effects with substituted epoxides.
The determination of absolute configuration, one of Nina's favorite topics, is addressed in contributions from the groups of Polavarapu, Kacprzak, and Stephens. Chiral discrimination is addressed by Gawronski in an elegant study on chiral derivatization agents for amino acids based on trans-1,2-diaminocyclohexane (another of Nina's favorite molecules). Enantiomeric resolution is illustrated by Tamura. An excellent collection of contributions on chromatographic enantioseparation includes new chitosan, crown ether, and fluorous phases contributed by the groups of Okamoto, Hyun, and Mikami.
Asymmetric synthesis as another key topic is addressed, among others, by Wipf and coworkers, reporting on ligand optimization for transmetalation aldehyde addition reaction. The Lacour group elaborates on sweetened hexacoordinated phosphates as chiral auxiliaries, Duddeck on atropisomeric oxazolidinone ligands, Rosini on eneantioselective sulfoxidations, and Proni on the synthesis of enantiopure fulleryl amino acids.
Last but not least, there is an exciting collection of contributions focusing on topics related to supramolecular chirality and chiral nanotechnology, one of the more recent topics of interest of Nina. Highlights include Aida's porphyrin dimers that can stereoselectively recognize chiral fullerenes and Yashima's helical poly(phenylacetylene)s chirality sensors, here decorated with chiral pyrene pendants. Saigo reports on chiral hydrogen-bonded networks, Purello on the chiral memory of porphyrin stacks, and Burgi and Huang on the chirality of golden and magnetic nanoparticles, respectively.
We hope you enjoy reading this firework on chirality and warmly thank all authors for their contributions which make this tribute to Nina such a great success.
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
We are pleased to publish this special issue of Chirality dedicated to Professor Domenico Misiti on the occasion of his 75 th birthday and as a splendid recognition of his important contributions to the field of organic and bioorganic chemistry and stereochemistry. After receiving his doctorate in c