Total Synthesis
A total synthesis is the complete chemical synthesis of complex organic molecules from simple, commercially available (petrochemical) or natural precursors. In a linear synthesis—often adequate for simple structures—several steps are performed one after another until the molecule is complete. The chemical compounds made in each step are usually deemed synthetic intermediates. For more complex molecules, a different approach may be preferable: convergent synthesis involves the individual preparation of several "pieces" (key intermediates), which are then combined to form the desired product.
Robert Burns Woodward, who received the 1965 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for several total syntheses (e.g., his 1954 synthesis of strychnine), is regarded as the father of modern organic synthesis. Some latter-day examples include Wender's, Holton's, Nicolaou's and Danishefsky's synthesis of Taxol.
Read more about this topic: Organic Synthesis
Famous quotes containing the words total and/or synthesis:
“You need an infinite stretch of time ahead of you to start to think, infinite energy to make the smallest decision. The world is getting denser. The immense number of useless projects is bewildering. Too many things have to be put in to balance up an uncertain scale. You can’t disappear anymore. You die in a state of total indecision.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The spider-mind acquires a faculty of memory, and, with it, a singular skill of analysis and synthesis, taking apart and putting together in different relations the meshes of its trap. Man had in the beginning no power of analysis or synthesis approaching that of the spider, or even of the honey-bee; but he had acute sensibility to the higher forces.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)