Seminar:

Notice:  Due to weather this has been cancelled

Profile: Dr. Larry E. Overman is Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. He was born in Chicago in 1943. Overman obtained a B.A. degree from Earlham College in 1965, and he completed his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1969, under Howard Whitlock Jr. Professor Overman is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was the recipient of the Arthur C. Cope Award in 2003, and he was awarded the Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry for 2008.

Abstract: Convergent synthesis strategies in which an organic molecule is prepared by a branched approach wherein two or more fragments are combined at a late stage are almost always preferred over a linear approach in which the overall yield of the target molecule is eroded by the efficiency of each successive step in the sequence. As a result, reactions that achieve the high-yielding union of polyfunctional fragments have particular importance in the preparation of structurally intricate organic molecules. This lecture will discuss the under-appreciated utility of bimolecular reactions of free radicals to couple structurally intricate fragments with a particular emphasis on the total synthesis of heterocyclic diterpenoid natural products.