Organic Synthesis Via Examination of Selected Natural Products

Complete with problems and solutions, this book is written for advanced graduate and undergraduate students to expose them to a variety of strategies for the synthesis of organic compounds. This is done largely within the context of natural products synthesis, but includes some unnatural products synthesis. Multiple approaches to each group of synthesis targets are presented, and the approaches are compared with one another with an eye on similarities and differences. General problems in organic synthesis (for example, strategies for the preparation of 6-membered rings and 5-membered rings, the importance of oxidation state, the problem of acyclic diastereoselectivity, the problem of controlling absolute stereochemistry, the importance of functional group relationships) are introduced early in the book and revisited throughout the text within the context of a variety of structurally unrelated natural products. The book includes power-point presentations to provide teachers who do not (or do) specialize in organic synthesis with access to well-organized material they can use in the classroom (with advanced students). The book provides the reader with a somewhat historical overview of organic and natural products chemistry, and spans synthetic methodology that dates from the 1940's to present time. It is written in a style that readers will find entertaining at times. It also contains lots of useful references with complete titles provided. This is much more helpful to the reader than the usual author-journal-year-page information.