Notes from Group Meeting - 2

School year officially started this week, meaning we finally have group meetings again. A couple of people were mentioned jokingly between professors that I had to look up, cause I sure don't want to be left out of the loop.

The first person was Phil Baran. We were discussing a synthesis, and the presenter showed how a group achieved their goal by performing six steps to protect, oxidize, deprotect, an so on. Professor B said to Professor A (paraphrase), "With that many steps just for protection, Phil Baran must be in pain!"

Google tells me Phil S. Baran is a professor at Scripps, and his focus is on "Aiming for the Ideal Synthesis". His mantra: "Total synthesis in this century must therefore be keenly aware of this ultimate challenge – to be able to provide large quantities of complex natural products with a minimum amount of labor and material expenses." He follows JB Hendrickson's dictum, …creates a complex molecule… in a sequence of only construction reactions involving no intermediary refunctionalizations, and leading directly to the target, not only its skeleton but also its correctly placed functionality." He recently published in Science about a 14 step efficient synthesis that his group performed. He is well respected in his field. Many of his papers are protecting group free, and would be considered 'elegant'. Hence, the joke from Prof B to A.

The second person, I didn't actually get his name down, or exactly what happened. We were taking about ethics with all of the apparent fraud going on, and Prof A mentions Jim/John/Joe McNair/McClair/McBear and how he faked his NMR spectra for cylcohexanol (?). This was the big deal in the 90's, or so I'm told, long before I was ever in the industry. I wish I could find more on him, but the internet gods are not with me today. If you know more or can find something interesting about this, contact me and I will put more about him in. Anyway, that's all from group meeting this week. Next week there are practice problems, so I'll see if I can dig up anything fun/interesting/juicy about them.

-Woodward

Edit - Chris Vonnegut and Joshua Sacher (@ArgyleAardvark) have found who I was talking about. James LaClair was the man who published a synthesis of Hexacylcinol, in 2006.  Check out the blurb on Wikipedia.