Free Energy Relationships in Organic and Bio-Organic Chemistry

摘要

Free energy relationships,which were independently discovered and developed by Br0nsted and Hammett in the early 1920s,have been of inestimable importance in the elucidation of organic and bio-organic reaction mechanisms in the intervening eight decades.Unfortunately,I suspect that most organic chemists have little more than a rudimentary knowledge of this vast and very important subject.Even though I have taught the fundamentals of the subject on numerous occasions to graduate students and upper division chemistry majors and have successfully used the methodology in one of my research papers (1),I feel inadequate on the rare occasions when I read a paper dealing with a bio-organic reaction mechanism.All of us know that there is just too much material for any scientist to master these days.Nonetheless,if the need arose,for example,in a research project,where would a mechanistic,physical,or even a synthetic organic chemist go to become more fluent in the use of free energy relationships? What is a good resource when we teach this material to undergraduate and graduate students? I believe the answer to both questions is the book under review:Free Energy Relationships in Organic and Bio-Organic Chemistry.Andrew Williams of the University of Kent (England)has written three other books and has studied the mechanisms of organic and bio-organic reactions for close to 40 years.