The Art of Building Molecules

The building of molecules with well-defined properties is a core task of chemistry, and important for many applications. Developing suitable catalytic methods is a difficult art—and two pioneers in the field have recently been awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their for their unexpected discovery. The two discovered that, in addition to metal complexes and enzymes, purely organic molecules can also be used as effective asymmetric catalysts.

Discover exciting contributions to modern catalysis research

Wiley-VCH—publishing partner of the GDCh—offers full text downloads after short registration.

Access the work of these two Nobel Prize laureates in five Angewandte Chemie papers. This collection of articles is not limited to the field of asymmetric organocatalysis (pp. 5-17), but also covers: 

• MacMillan's work in the field of photoredox catalysis (pp. 18-27)
• The organocatalytic asymmetric intramolecular [4+2] cycloaddition of in situ generated ortho-quinone methides using a chiral imidophosphoric acid catalyst
• The utilization of (S)-TRIP as monofunctional catalyst for the synthesis of several alkylated indolizines with enantiomeric ratios of up to 98:2 (p. 14)
• Enantioselective catalytic protonation of bis-silyl ketene acetals (p. 5)

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