8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thinking about synthesis, February 10, 1998
By A Customer
Gets your mind thinking in the best way to make compounds. Instead of trying to remember hundreds of transformations, Warren's book shows you how to disconnect the compound into is smallest parts and how they could be put together. Basically, he discribes how to do retro-synthesis. Certainly another must for any medicinal or organic chemist.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Retrosynthetic Analysis, March 6, 2002
Warren's Organic Synthesis-Disconnection Approach focuses on retrosynthetic analysis in organic synthesis. Some of the central concepts introduced in this strategy book are synthons, target molecule, FGI (functional group interconversion), disconnection, and reagent.
Synthons: an idealized fragment, usually a cation or an anion, resulting from a disconnection. Synthons may or may not be an intermediate in the corresponding reaction.
Disconnection: the reverse operation to a reaction. The imagined cleavage of a bond to "break" the molecule into possible starting materials.
Functional group interconversion: the process of converting one functional group into another by substitution, addition, elimination, oxidation, or reduction, and the reverse operation used in retrosynthetic analysis.
Reagent: Warren introduces a formal and rigid definition of reagent in this book. Reagent is a compound used in practice for a synthon.
Warren's treatise of organic synthesis emphasizes visualizing and choosing not only the most obvious but the most efficient disconnection (retrosynthesis) in synthesizing a target molecule. The book is set up in a fashion such that synthetic strategies and organic reactions are presented in alternating chapters. Strategies aim to enforce tricks and concepts of organic synthesis like stereoselectivity, control of regiochemistry and stereochemistry, control of carbonyl condensation, order of events in synthesis, rearrangements, use of ringed molecules. Reaction chapters present some of the most significant reactions in organic synthesis, with an emphasis of those involve carbon-carbon formation.
Topics of Warren's Organic Synthesis:
Synthesis Strategies
-The Disconnection Approach
-The Order of Events
-Chemoselectivity
-Reversal of Polarity, Cyclization Reactions
-Protecting Groups
-Choosing a Disconnection (General Strategy)
-Stereoselectivity
-Regioselectivity
-Use of Acetylenes
-Introduction of Carbonyl Condensations
-Control in Carbonyl Condensations
-Use of Aliphatic Nitro Compounds in Synthesis
-Radical Reactions in Synthesis
-Reconnections
-Introduction to Ring Synthesis, Saturated Heterocycles
-Rearrangements in Synthesis
-Use of Ketenes in Synthesis
-Pericyclic Rearrangements in Synthesis
-Special Methods for 5-Membered Rings
Reaction Methods
-One Group C-X Disconnections
-Two Group C-X Disconnections
-Amine Synthesis
-One Group C-C Disconnections: Alcohols
-One Group C-C Disconnections: Carbonyl Compounds
-Alkene Synthesis
-Two Group Disconnections: Diels-Alder Reactions
-Two Group Disconnections: 1,3-Difunctionalized Compounds and alpha,beta-unsaturated Carbonyl Compounds
-Two Group Disconnections: 1,5-Difunctionalized Compounds, Michael Addition, Robinson Annulation
-Two Group Disconnections: 1,2-Difunctionalized Compounds
-Two Group Disconnections: 1,4-Difunctionalized Compounds
-Two Group Disconnections: 1,6-Difunctionalized Compounds
-Three-Membered Rings
-Four-Membered Rings: Photochemistry in Synthesis
-Five-Membered Rings
-Six-Membered Rings
-Aromatic Heterocycles
The book teaches retrosynthetic analysis in organic synthesis. The ability to recognize an obvious and/or obscure disconnection facilitates organic synthesis tremendously. The methods and strategies presented in Warren gives advanced undergraduate students, graduate students and practicing chemists an overview of the most significant retrosynthetic pathways. Exceptional work.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent, definitive, October 14, 2009
This review is from: Organic Synthesis: The Disconnection Approach (Paperback)
An amazing and incisive description of retrosynthetic techniques, written at the advanced undergraduate level.
My criticisms would be:
(1) Rather too terse at some points; a few more words would make it flow more smoothly;
(2) As the book progresses, there are increasing references to "Strategy and Control", and more annoyingly, the workbook; the text is not entirely self contained, and I should not have to purchase the workbook for simple clarification;
(3) The index is really poor. This is the book's principal failing, and makes hunting around for cross references much harder than it should be.
Nevertheless, this is a wonderful work on an exciting and important area of organic chemistry, and I heartily recommend it.
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