Named reactions Birch reduction

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... 

This reaction is called the Birch reduction, named after the Australian chemist Arthur Birch, who systematically explored the details of this reaction. The mechanism, which is believed to be very similar to the mechanism of alkyne reduction via a dissolving metal reduction, is comprised of four steps (Mechanism 18.1). 

The second common synthetic route is called the Birch method, Birch reaction, or Birch reduction. The reaction is not a traditional Birch reduction described in organic text and reference books in which a benzene ring is reduced, resulting in two double bonds rather than three. Rather, the name "Birch" may have arisen... 

Alkali metals in liquid ammonia represent the most important class of the so-called dissolving-metal reductions of aromatics. First described in 1937, it is a highly efficient and convenient process to convert aromatic hydrocarbons to partially reduced derivatives.201 The recognition and extensive development of this electron-transfer reduction came from A. J. Birch,202,203 and the reaction bears his name. 

The practice of selective reduction is stilt an art - . Note the different products for EtC CEt and PhC=CPh in Table 9 produced under different conditions. Now, Scheme 5 was devised to provide a broad rationale for diverse results in both named (Birch, Benkeser, Normant) and unnamed reductions. One learns that the presence of acids, i.e. NHJ in Na-NHj or /-BuOH in Na-HMPT, and low reaction temperatures favour anti reduction - Proton donors usually preclude alkyne-allene... 

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