Organization of the Book and Content

Two major industrial dyes produced by European factories since the middle of the XIXth century 

On the academic side, W. H. Perkin made mention of unsuccessful experiments directed towards the preparation of benzocyclobutene in 1888. This compound was eventually prepared by H. Finkelstein, a student of J. Thiele, in 1909, as reported in his long-unknown Ph.D. thesis. Benzocyclobutene and biphenylene were also reported by Lothrop in 1941. Tropylium bromide was synthesized in 1891 by Merling, but its structure was only established in 1954 by Doering and Knox. The isolation and structure determination of the aromatic steroids estrone, estriol, and estradiol arrived only in 1929 (E. A. Doissy, A. Bute-nandt), 1931 (G. F. Marian), and 1935 (E. A. Doissy), respectively, with the advent of X-ray crystallography. 

In the preparation of this book, we invited the best-known authors from very distinct areas of Modern Arene Chemistry . Gratifyingly, a large majority of them, induding the most prestigious ones, have accepted to contribute a chapter, so that the main areas of this broad topic are covered herein. 

Lawrence T. Scott, from Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, has been possibly the most successful chemist on the trail of the construction of C60 fragments, as illustrated in particular by his recent success in the synthesis of C60 [91]. His chapter (No. 1), prepared together with his co-author M. M. Boorum, deals with the synthesis of C60 fragments, namely tris-annulated benzenes by aldol trimerization of cyclic ketones. 

Akira Suzuki, from Kurashiki University, Japan, is one of the great names of arene chemistry due to his outstanding reaction that bears his name. As expected, his chapter (No. 3) deals with the Suzuki reaction with arylboron compounds and its synthetic applications in arene chemistry. The Suzuki reaction is now becoming all the more important as requirements for organic synthesis will necessarily have to take ecological aspects ( green chemistry ) into account and use of a number of toxic metals is phased out. 

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