Named reactions Baeyer-Villiger oxidation

Alternative reactions employ coupling reagents such as DCC (Steglich Esterification), preformed esters (transesterification), carboxylic acid chlorides or anhydrides. These reactions avoid the production of water. Another pathway for the production of esters is the formation of a carboxylate anion, which then reacts as a nucleophile with an electrophile (similar reactions can be found here). Esters may also be produced by oxidations, namely by the Baeyer-Villiger oxidation and oxidative esterifications. 

The choice of which reactions to include is not an easy one. First there are the well known "Name Reactions", that have appeared in various monographs or in the old Merck index. Some of these are so obvious mechanistically to the modern organic chemistry practitioner that we have in fact omitted them for instance esterification of alcohols with acid chlorides - the Schotten-Baumann procedure. Others are so important and so well entrenched by name, like the Baeyer-Villiger ketone oxidation, that it is impossible to ignore them. In general we have kept older name reactions that are not obvious at first glance. 

Into this group fall the named oxidation rearrangement reactions which proceed with carbon-carbon bond cleavage and 1,2-transfer of an alkyl group to a heteroatom, such as the Baeyer-Villiger reaction (discussed in Chapter 5.1, this volume) and the Beckmann reaction (found in Chapter 5.2, this volume) of ketones, as well as the Hofmann reaction/Schmidt reaction/Curtius reanangement of carboxylic acid derivatives. The two examples discussed here involve related reactions of alcohols. 

Although Chapter 17 discussed several oxidation reactions, an important reaction was not discussed in that chapter. Section 17.3 discussed the oxidation of an alkene to an epoxide using a peroxyacid such as 163 (also see Chapter 10, Section 10.5). Peroxyacids also react with ketones to form esters in what is known as the Baeyer-Villiger reaction. This reaction is named in honor of its discoverers, Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf von Baeyer (Germany 1835-1917) and Victor Villiger (Switzerland 1868-1934). 

---