Fundamentals of Organic Chemistry

They are not themselves living, but can reproduce themselves amazingly quickly when they infect a host. They manipulate the genetic machinery of the host cells to use it for their own ends. 

Wohler pursued these experiments further and discovered that urea and ammonium cyanate had the same chemical formula, but very different chemical properties. This was an early discovery of isomerism, since urea has the formula CO(NH2)2 and ammonium cyanate has the formula NH4CNO. Wohler s results conclusively destroyed the belief that there was a distinction between the chemistry of life and general inorganic chemistry. It opened up the door to a whole branch of organic chemistry centred on the properties and reactions of carbon-containing compounds. 

Around six million compounds of carbon are already known This versatility is made possible by certain unique properties of carbon. Carbon is a non-metal in group 14 of the periodic table and forms predominantly covalent compounds. There are three special features of covalent bonding involving carbon  

Atoms of other elements can copy some of this versatility to a limited extent (e.g. silicon atoms can form short chains, while sulfur atoms can arrange themselves in rings). But only carbon can achieve all these different bonding arrangements, and do so to an amazing extent. The ability of carbon to form chains and rings is known as catenation. 

There are other features of carbon that help to reinforce its unique position as the most versatile of the elements as regards compound formation. Carbon not only forms multiple bonds with itself, but it can also form double and triple bonds with other elements such as oxygen (the carbonyl group, C=0, is an important feature of aldehydes, ketones and carboxylic acids), and with nitrogen (in nitriles, which contain the C=1SI group). 

The emphasis in this and the subsequent chapters will be on the role computational chemistry has played in helping to bring definition and understanding to organic problems. 

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McMuiTy, 1., and Castellion, M.E. (1997J Fundamentals of Organic Chemistry, Brooks Cole. 

From fundamentals of Organic Chemistry by I.W. Solomons. 1982 Edition. John Wiley and Sons, New York)... 

Graham Solomons, T.W. Fundamentals of Organic Chemistry, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1999. 

McMuny, J. Fundamentals of Organic Chemistry, Thomson Learning Publications, Fresno, CA, 1997. 

Richey. H.G., Jr. Fundamentals of Organic Chemistry, Pentrice Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ. 1983... 

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