The Principle of Minimum Chemical Distance (PMCD)

✍ Scribed by Dr. Clemens Jochum; Dr. Johann Gasteiger; Prof. Dr. Ivar Ugi

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1980
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 958 KB
• Volume: 19
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0044-8249
• DOI: 10.1002/anie.198004953

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The principle of minimum chemical distance (PMCD) allows one to formulate the isoprene rule, the conversion of tetrahydrodicyclopentadiene into adamantane, five syntheses of colchicine, and the syntheses of C~16~‐hexaquinacene, morphine and strychnine as optimization problems which can be solved by computers in less than a second. The principle of minimum chemical distance is based on an algebraic theory of constitutional chemistry. The PMCD, a corollary to the well known principle of minimum structure change, is a quantitative heuristic rule which serves as the foundation of the computer‐assisted combinatorial solution of a great variety of chemical problems, particularly in substructure analysis, the study of reaction mechanism, and the design of syntheses.