The Conversion of Carboxylic Acids to Ketones:A Repeated Discovery

摘要

The conversion of carboxylic acids to ketones is a useful chemical transformation and one that has a long history.It is curious,though,in that it has been reported by several authors who believed that they were the first to have "discovered" the reaction.The most widely studied reaction of this type is the Dakin-West reaction (1).This reaction was described in 1928 by the two biological chemists whose name it bears (2) and involves the conversion of alpha-amino acids to alpha-acetimido ketones using acetic anhydride in the presence of base.Reaction of the amine group to amide was not surprising when the reaction was discovered but the conversion of the acid functionality to ketone was thought,wrongly,to be completely novel.