Chemical evolution optical activity

When my interest returned and we began researching the analytical applications of CD in the 70 s, I felt I had a head start. But there was so much that was new. A great deal had happened to CD over the years as it matured and expanded to include the far-UV the study of optical activity in excited state emissions, and in vibrational and Raman spectroscopy and the evolution of new empirical models applicable to the interpretation of the structural properties of macromolecules. Most important of all, perhaps, was the arrival of high tech electronics and materials which had brought CD instrumentation out of the dark ages. And now, ironically, almost 35 years after my introduction to CD, my special interest is the exploitation of chiral transition metal complexes as chirality induction reagents in chemical analysis. 

As to the origin and the evolution of the asynunetry of organic compounds, there have been presented various hypotheses. Concerning the formation of optically active polymer in chemical evolution, three fundamental types wcmld be expected ... 

This evolution in QSAR was slow. As in many sciences, the evolution has been driven by discoveries of chemical behavior that could not be explained using conventional concepts and models. For example, Louis Pasteur recognized that optical activity (a phenomenon observed earlier ) was the result of the molecular dissymmetry later called chirality (from Greek cheir = hand). The concept of stereochemistry, however, was introduced by van t Hoff and Le Bel. It was V. Prelog" who pointed out that stereochemistry is not a branch of chemistry but a point of view. Part of this point of view is the description of structure that explains relevant behavior, which necessarily leads to additional levels of taxonomic analysis of chemicals. 

---