This is my final blog from the RSC symposium on synthesis in organic chemistry, and it’s been great. The undoubted highlight came last night, when Ian Fleming (now an emeritus professor) gave a brilliant overview of his career, describing all the influences that culminated in his famous work on the use of silyl groups in organic synthesis.

Starting from his work as grad student, he presented the highs (and occasional lows) of his career with wit and candour. He began his working life in the 1950s, at a time when state-of-the-art spectroscopy meant IR and combustion analysis was often the linchpin of your analytical data. NMR had only just been invented and was only to be used “if you were desperate”, as he put it. And if you did get an NMR, you needed good eyesight, because the resulting spectra were smaller than dollar bills. Even a couple of decades later, 10 g of sample were still required for a carbon-13 NMR experiment.

It was a fascinating story, peppered with amusing anecdotes – for example, as a grad student, he had to cover all his samples with watch glasses, to stop his PhD supervisor from absent-mindedly tipping ash into them from his pipe. And it was fascinating to get the inside story of some of the historic achievements in organic chemistry – such as Woodward’s synthesis of vitamin B12.

Fleming spoke for 90 minutes and was rewarded with a standing ovation – not something that I’ve ever seen before at a chemistry conference. It was an evocative description of a bygone era, delivered by one of the last remaining gentleman chemists, and I felt privileged to witness it.

So, thumbs up to Cambridge. The next meeting in this series will be in two years time – I heartily recommend it, and I hope I’ll see you all there!

Andy

Andrew Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)

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WARNING! This blog entry contains a joke with chemical content! Those of a nervous disposition may want to look away.

For those who didn’t read my last entry, I’m currently at an RSC symposium on organic chemistry, held in Cambridge (UK, not MA). It’s traditional for UK conferences to be held at universities, apparently so the delegates can be shocked at the quality of the food. Last night was particularly cruel, because all the tables were laid out with wine glasses, creating an expectation of alcohol. Sadly, no wine was actually forthcoming, so the delegates had to face the evening lecture unfortified.

Still, we’ve had some cracking talks. Today, Varinder Aggarwal presented some powerful chemistry for homologating boronic esters; this allows carbon chains to be ‘grown’ with control over the relative and absolute stereochemistry. This work has yet to be published, but he reckons the paper will be ready later this year - so keep your eyes peeled.

Shu Kobayashi discussed various topics in catalysis, ranging from scandium complexes that enable carbon-carbon bond formations to be performed in water (click here for an example), to lab-on-a-chip hydrogenations that are performed in channels coated with polymer-encapsulated palladium. And Dean Toste gave an overview of his work on gold catalysis – a truly amazing lecture, delivered with such aplomb and rapidity that it was difficult to tell when he drew breath.

So who told the chemistry joke? It was Amos B. Smith III, at the evening lecture last night. Dithiane groups feature heavily in his work, and he was questioned about the best way of removing them. This prompted the following gag:

Why are there 32 methods for removing dithianes?
Because none of them work…

Andy

Andrew Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by amitchinson at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don’t seem to be having much luck at conferences recently. At the ACS meeting in Chicago earlier this year, I was given a hotel room without a bed. Yesterday, I turned up for an RSC symposium on organic synthesis and there wasn't even a room for me. At this rate, I’m assuming that when I arrive in Boston for the autumn ACS meeting I’ll discover that my hotel doesn’t exist.

Anyway, once the small issue of my accommodation was sorted out, I had a fun evening catching up with some familiar faces until very late in the night. I’m now experiencing that familiar conference feeling of being very tired but totally wired on coffee.

The lectures this morning kicked off in fine style with Steve Davies. You could hear the scratching of pens on paper coming from all around as he described lots of useful synthetic organic chemistry reactions (including an amazingly stereoselective variant of the Horner-Wadsworth-Emmons reaction – I’ll post the details of the paper once it gets published). Incidentally, I’ve commented before that chemists often seem to have splendid hair, but Steve’s must surely win all the prizes…

Another highlight was Ben List’s talk on new strategies in organocatalysis, including some very neat ideas on chiral Bronsted acid cataysis using phosphoric acid derivatives – see this paper for an example. Contributing to the truly international flavour of the symposium, Goverdhan Mehta from the Indian Institute of Science presented some of his total syntheses of biologically active natural products. Worryingly, he began by defending total synthesis, which he thinks is being marginalized – does anyone agree with him?

OK, that’s plenty for now, but I’ll update you on other interesting stuff tomorrow.

Andy

Andrew Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)

Posted by amitchinson at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)