Woodward-Hoffmann rules summary

Kenichi Fukui and Roald Hoffmann won the Nobel prize in 1981 (Woodward died in 1979 and so couldn t share this prize he had already won the Nobel prize in 1965 for his work on synthesis) for the application of orbital symmetry to pericyclic reactions. Theirs is an alternative description to the frontier orbital method we have used and you need to know a little about it. They considered a more fundamental correlation between the symmetry of all the orbitals in the starting materials and all the orbitals in the products. This is rather too complex for our consideration here, and we shall concentrate only on a summary of the conclusions—the Woodward-Hoffmann rules. The most important of these states ... 

In summary, the Woodward-Hoffmann rules for sigmatropic rearrangements (Table 4.5) are as follows. Both components of a sigmatropic rearrangement involving an odd number of electron pairs are suprafacial under thermal condi-... 

In Summary Conjugated dienes and hexatrienes are capable of (reversible) electrocyclic ring closures to cyclobutenes and 1,3-cyclohexadienes, respectively. The diene-cyclobutene system prefers thermal conrotatory and photochemical disrotatory modes. The triene-cyclohexadiene system reacts in the opposite way, proceeding through thermal disrotatory and photochemical comotatory rearrangements. The stereochemistry of such electrocychc reactions is governed by the Woodward-Hoffmann rules. 

A summary of the important discoveries made by these authors (Woodward-Hoffmann symmetry rules). 

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