Formal Synthesis
A formal synthesis describes not the synthesis of the desired end product but the synthesis of a compound that is already known from the literature to be a precursor to that desired end product. If it is known from the literature that B can be converted to C then a novel route from compound A to compound B is a formal proof that A can also give access to C.
Read more about this topic: Total Synthesis
Famous quotes containing the words formal and/or synthesis:
“True variety is in that plenitude of real and unexpected elements, in the branch charged with blue flowers thrusting itself, against all expectations, from the springtime hedge which seems already too full, while the purely formal imitation of variety ... is but void and uniformity, that is, that which is most opposed to variety....”
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“Our art is the finest, the noblest, the most suggestive, for it is the synthesis of all the arts. Sculpture, painting, literature, elocution, architecture, and music are its natural tools. But while it needs all of those artistic manifestations in order to be its whole self, it asks of its priest or priestess one indispensable virtue: “faith.””
—Sarah Bernhardt (1845–1923)