OC-Kolloquium: Prof. Dr. A. Ganesan

Prof. Dr. A. Ganesan, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK:

Total Synthesis – The First Fifty Years

The total synthesis of complex natural products was revolutionised by Corey’s invention of retrosynthetic analysis in the 1960s. But how was total synthesis performed in the pre-Corey era? Willstatter’s 1901 route to tropinone involved six alkene formations and nearly 20 steps is very different from Robinson’s 1917 one step three component synthesis. I will discuss the inspiration for Robinson’s work and how it was applied by others such as Corey and Heathcock for iminium ion cascade reactions. We will then compare Woodward’s 1944 quinine synthesis with modern approaches to the alkaloid.