Continual Expansion of the Objectives Studied by Organic Chemistry

3 Continual Expansion of the Objectives Studied by Organic Chemistry 

Increasing the set of known organic compounds is one of the more unassuming but necessary jobs for a professional synthetic chemist unassuming because the majority of such syntheses can have a very commonplace character and thus be rather unimpressive, even though they lead to the creation of tens or even hundreds of new compounds. 

This route of self-development was a natural and unavoidable occupation for the immature science of organic chemistry. Now, when millions of organic compounds have already been described and their basic classes studied rather thoroughly, such a synthesis for the sake of synthesis may seem extravagant. It is a most difficult dilemma to ascertain whether it is actually worthwhile to appropriate resources from a goal-orientated investigation to the synthesis of 

As is the case with every fundamental science, organic chemistry probes the unknown. It is impossible to predict whether or not a significant discovery in some particular area may or may not happen. Even less can be said about the practical applications of potential discoveries. With certainty, however, one can predict that if organic chemistry is arrested in its evolution, both the discoveries in unexplored areas and their further applications will never occur. 

Chemists who synthesized cholesterol benzoate about 100 years ago, a routine synthesis of a derivative of a known compound, had no way of knowing that they had opened a route to the creation of innumerable and various devices in which liquid crystals are used. This new state of a material was unexpectedly discovered in the course of studies which were narrowly focused at the preparation of various derivatives from the readily available natural compound cholesterol. Similarly, the epoch of modern chemotherapy originated with the discovery of sulfa drugs , which happened as an absolutely unexpected consequence in a broad investigation aimed at the synthesis of hundreds of most diversified derivatives of aromatic compounds, potentially useful as components of azo dyes. 

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