Peter Wharton's Patterns of Organic Reactions

	> Home > About Us > Privacy Policy > Contact us

To Dr. Peter Wharton, the teacher I never met.

In the history of organic chemistry, hundreds of names are used to name organic reactions, which are the backbones of synthetic organic chemistry. One of these names is Peter Stanley Wharton. His discovery, Wharton Reaction, was published on J. Org. Chem. 1961, 26, 3615; 4781. Wharton is one of the genius in organic chemistry field. His Patterns of Organic Reactions is a very creative way of organizing the organic chemistry reactions. His students and colleagues learned a lot from this piece of brilliant work. However, Dr. Wharton did not care too much about his personal name, so, he did not publish his brilliant work. We, eCompound.com community, will dedicate some space for Dr. Wharton's Patterns of Organic Reactions, and let his brilliant idea continue to shine the mind of our organic chemists.

Here, I am humble using my own words to explain Dr. Wharton's brilliant idea. The pictures and most of the examples used in this web site are from Dr. Wharton's lecture materials with his permission.

Part 1. Organic reactions are everywhere in and around our live.

Figure 1. Examples of critical chemical compounds in or around our life.

Organic reactions have nothing but bond breaking and bond making.

Figure 2. The linear strings of reactions.

The symbols used in Dr, Wharton's Patterns of Organic Reactions are very simple and effective.

Figure 3. Symbols used in reaction description.

Figure 4. Prototypal Pericyclic Patterns.

Practices:

You will find answer somewhere around this website