ACS Meeting 2

Monday - I spent the morning in New Reactions and Methodology and the afternoon at the Corey Award Symposium.  The morning contained  more chemistry of the organocatalysis, inimium ion, and allyl palladium chemistry variety they appears to dominate the sessions I have been to. Of course the Corey talks were much the same.

Eric Jacobsen gave a nice talk on his group's work.  It gave a sense of the thought process, challenges, insights, and overall path of the development of the work his group has done over the last 10-15 years.  He showed mechanistic rational and application to synthesis in a nice balance.  In a symposium, where there is no question period this is nice.  His talk stood in contrast to some I have seen at the meeting which are a litany of examples of a reaction observed in the first five slides.

In Charette's talk, he may have provided me with a solution to a major nagging problem in my own work.  Unfortunately the solution is not new, the basic chemistry having been published a few years back.  Back in the olden days I would leaf through paper journals when I had a few minutes to kill and would often find new and useful chemistries I might have missed if I just scanned the abstracts.  Now I have mainly find such gems at department seminars or at local symposia and at ACS meetings.

Well, back to the afternoons talks.

T.S. Hall