From Discovery to Application: 50 Years of the Vinylcyclopropane-Cyclopentene Rearrangement and Its Impact on the Synthesis of Natural Products

摘要

Now the Director of the Office of the Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Norman P. Neureiter was a young research chemist with Humble Oil and Refining (subsequently Esso, now Exxon) for a few years after having received his PhD degree from Northwestern University in 1957. He left research in 1963 for a distinguished career in public service and as an executive with Texas Instruments, but during those years he spent at the bench, he published 12 articles and 11 patents. Among them was a preparation of 2-chlorocyclopentadiene and 1,1-dichlorocyclopent-3-ene by the pyrolysis of 1,1-dichloro-2-vinylcyclopropane: the first reported vinylcyclopropane-cyclopentene rearrangement. Two patents related to this chemistry followed.