Named reactions Arndt-Eistert reaction

Can the organic chemists associated with so-called Named Reactions make the same claim as supermodel Heidi Klum Many scholars of chemistry do not hesitate to point out that the names associated with name reactions are often not the acmal inventors. For instance, the Arndt-Eistert reaction has nothing to do with either Arndt or Eistert, Pummerer did not discover the Pummerer rearrangement, and even the famous Birch reduction owes its initial discovery to someone named Charles Wooster (first reported in a DuPont patent). The list goes on and on... 

In this section we have explored a number of rearrangement reactions that involve ketenes or ketene-like intermediates. Notice that each of these rearrangements is a name reaction (Wolff, Arndt-Eistert, Hofmann, and Curtius). Don t panic about keeping the specifics of the reactions connected to the names. Most instructors will not ask you to reproduce the reactions by name. However, if your future includes organic chemistry, you wiU see them again and become familiar with them. Of course if your future does not include organic chemistry, at least you can appreciate the predictability and trends these reactions illustrate. 

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