Beauties of synthesis

摘要

Many organic chemists spend their days searching for creative solutions to real-world problems, yet the media pays them just a fraction of the attention devoted to physicists or biologists. Even fellow scientists think organic chemistry is esoteric. Ask a group of organic chemists why they love their work, however, and most will tell you that it enables them to make things that no one else has made before. Many spend their days trying to make large, architecturally complex molecules, and some believe that the journey taken to prepare the compound is as important as arriving at the destination. Indeed, chemists are frequently drawn to the field because there is not just one way to solve the problem, and the search can reveal a bit more about how the world works.