Chemical Creativity: Ideas from the Work of Woodward, Hückel, Meerwein and Others

Introduction: The Nature of Science and the History of Science/An Experiment. Discoveries Missed, Discoveries Made - Two Case Studies of Creativity in Chemistry: Science and the Individual/Diels, Alder, Their Competitors, and the Discovery of the Diene Synthesis/Thiele/The Alternation Effect and the Discovery of Orbital Symmetry. Erich Huckel and the Theory of Aromaticity - Reflections on Theory and Experiment: Debye-Huckel Theory of Electrolytic Solutions/Nature of the Double Bond/Hybridization in Double Bonds/Benzene Problem/MO Description of Conjugated Cyclic Compounds/Orbital Symmetry (Woodward-Hoffmann Rules)/ Extension of Cyclic p-Electron MO Theory to Transition States of Pericyclic Reactions/Violation of Hund's Rule in Biradicals/Reflections on Huckel's Career. The Dienone-Phenol Mysteries: Isolations of Estrogens/Approaches to the Estrogens by Aromatization of Ring A/ Alicyclic Steroids/Woodward's Challenge/Misgivings About the Structures/Why did Woodward Undertake the Correction of the Phenolic Structures?/Woodward and the Total Synthesis of Steriods/Approaches and Achievements/Mechanistic Motivation. Meditations on the Special Convictive Power of Symmetrization Experiments: Enolization as a Mechanism of Symmetrization/The Menthone Problem/Tricyclene and the Wagner-Meerwein Rearrangement/The Pinacol Controversy/The Favorskii Rearrangement/Symmetrization/Racemization Machines with no Achiral Parts/Direct Nucleophilic Displacement Reaction/The Walden Inversion/Biological and Evolutionary Attraction of Symmetry. Epilogue.