Posted on behalf of Sugar Daddy

Sorry for my extended absence. I was reading some old posts in the Skeptical Chymist for inspiration for today’s post, and I found one by Catherine that encourages us to name more chemical reactions after people. In the post, she further asks whether we would prefer to have a reaction or a football stadium bear our name. I’d like to take that one step further.

If I discovered a new reaction, I would like to sell the naming rights to a corporation. There are many benefits – good press for the company for supporting basic scientific research, excellent promotion for the inventors of the reaction, and of course, most importantly, a much-needed income supplement for the graduate student inventor so he/she can put food on his/her table. There are some good candidate reaction/company partners already available:

The Henry reaction (“O’Hungry?”)

The Suzuki coupling (“Driving aryl-aryl bond formation since 1979”)

The McMurry coupling (“Would you like a side of TiCl4 with that?”),

The Huisgen [3+2] cycloaddition (“Buy the LEGO “click” kit today!”),

And, of course, the Corey-Bakshi-Shibata reduction (“America’s most-watched enantioselective reduction of ketones to secondary alcohols” – I think that slogan might have to be improved, but it can’t hurt too much – they are already trailing NBC and ABC quite badly in the 6 o’clock news ratings anyway.)

Any further suggestions?