Asymmetric synthesis basic principles

The synthesis of enantiomerically pure compounds is one of the major challenges in organic synthesis. On the basic principle of asymmetric catalysis using metal... 

This book deals with the basic principles of asymmetric catalysis and places particular emphasis on its synthetic significance. The mechanisms of most of the chemical reactions that I will discuss are obscure and are therefore treated only briefly. My talks at Cornell relied heavily on chemistry developed in our laboratories at Nagoya University, and the materials in Chapters 2, 3, 5, and 6 are highly subjective. Because asymmetric synthesis with molecular catalysts is a very attractive and rich subject, many academic and industrial laboratories all over the world have contributed to its development. In an attempt to balance my coverage of the entire field, I have tried to include most of the major achievements recorded by the fall of 1992 within Chapter 4. 

One of the most exciting and recently emerging areas in asymmetric synthesis is asymmetric amplification. This topic has extraordinarily broad implications from mechanistic insights provided by non-linear effects to the enhancement of enantiomeric composition of important compounds to new hypotheses for the origin of biomolecular homochirality. The final chapter by Henri Kagan and David Fenwick provides a thorough and insightful analysis of the basic principles of asymmetric amplification and illustrations of some of the more important applications in synthesis. 

The basic principles of asymmetric synthesis have been discussed in a number of recent reviews (2,3). The heart of an asymmetric synthesis is a reaction in which an achiral unit in an ensemble of substrate molecules is converted into a chiral unit in such a manner that the stereoisomeric products are obtained in unequal amounts. For almost all cases this is equivalent to the statement that in an asymmetric reaction a prochiral unit is converted into a chiral unit. 

Mulzer, J. Basic principles of asymmetric synthesis. Comprehensive Asymmetric Catalysis /-///1999, 1, 33-97. 

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