POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES

LOPEZ, QUEZON BRANCH

History of Organic Chemistry

Research Paper in
CHEMICAL BIOLOGY
BIOL 102

Submitted to:
Mr. Vince Czar Abel

Submitted by:
Irish F. Elmido

Date:
October 19, 2023
 HISTORICAL TIMELINE

340 BC Aristotle. The concept of vitalism seems to have been

derived from the philosophy of Aristotle.
Vitalism, a theory that an organic molecule cannot be
produced from an inorganic molecule, but instead can
only be produced from a living thing or some part of
living things

1250
Taddeo Alderotti. An alchemist who is given credit for
the development of fractional distillation.

Valerius Cordus. Diethyl Ether, also known simply as

1540
Ether, was first synthesized by the German-Dutch
chemist Valerius Cordus. He obtained it by the
distillation of ethanol with sulfuric acid. His synthesis of
diethyl ether was a notable achievement and added to
the growing body of knowledge about organic
compounds during this time.

1746 John Roebuck. Sulfuric acid is used to catalyze many

organic reactions as noted with the synthesis of diethyl
ether from ethanol. However, Roebuck developed the
first industrial scale synthesis of sulfuric acid.

1770 Torbern O. Bergman. Bergman was the first to

distinguish between organic and inorganic chemistry with
organic being associated with chemicals derived from
living things and containing a "property" called vitalism.
1806 N-L. Vauquelin, P-J. Robiquet. Vauquelin and his
student Robiquet isolated the first known amino acid. It
was not until a century later that Emil Fischer and
Hofmeister independently showed that proteins are
polymers made from amino acids.

1808, E-L. Malus, J-B. Biot. Malus and 4 years later, Biot
1812 developed the polarimeter. Biot discovered in 1815 that
solutions of tartaric acid can be optically active.

Friedrich Wohler. His experiment that disproved the

1828 concept of vitalism occurred in 1828. In this experiment,
Wohler synthesized urea, an organic compound, from
ammonium cyanate, which is an inorganic compound. As
his work provided strong evidences, the understanding
about organic chemistry changes and is considered the
downfall of the vitalist theory
1820’s Jons Jacob Berzelius. Berzelius coined the term
isomerism, catalyst and protein and reportedly
noticed that lactic acid has two optical isomers.

1820's J. L. Gay Lussac, J. F. von Liebig. Lussac developed

the method of combustion analysis and von Liebig made
the method practical for the determination of the percent
of carbon in organic compounds. Combustion analysis
opened up the field of organic chemistry. von Liebig
and Wöhler also initiated the concept of functional
groups.

Louis Pasteur. Although best known for his work on

1849 vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization,
Pasteur made a very significant contribution to organic
chemistry when he extentded Biot's work and achieved
the first resolution of a racemic mixture of tartaric acid
and laid the foundation of what we now call
stereochemistry.
1856 William Henry Perkin. Perkin, when attempting to
synthesize quinine, serendipitously synthesized
mauveine and had a successful career in dye synthesis.

1862 Emil Erlenmeyer. While known best for the Erlenmeyer

flask, Erlenmeyer performed many original syntheses,
developed the Erlenmeyer rule and very importantly was
the first to suggest the possibility of double and triple
bonds between two carbons.

1865 August Kekulé. Kekulé was one of the first to draw

structures of organic compounds using lines for bonds
and is most famous for his proposed Kekulé structure of
benzene.

1869 John Wesley Hyatt. The origin of polymer science has

been attributed to many different people. John Wesley
Hyatt has been given credit for preparing the first synthetic
polymer. In 1839, Johann Eduard Simon accidentally
prepared polystyrene. In 1909, Leo Baekeland
synthesized bakellite. Hermann Staudinger in 1920 was
the first to properly characterize polymers as
macromolecules.

1870 Vladimir V. Markovnikov. Markonikov is best known for

his useful Markonikov's rule stating that in an addition of
H-X to an alkene, the nucleophilic X- adds to the carbon
atom with fewer hydrogen atoms, while the proton adds to
the carbon atom with more hydrogen atoms bonded to it.

1871 Ernst Abbe. Abbe developed many optical tools including

the refractometer. The Abbe refractometer enables
precise measurements of refractive index which can help
identify previously known compounds.
1874 J. H. van 't Hoff, Joseph A. Le Be. van 't Hoff and Le Bel
developed the concept of the arrangement of atoms in
space (3d molecules) including the tetrahedral
arrangement of atoms bonded to a tetravalent carbon and
the relationship to optical activity.

1875 Alexander Zaitsev. In an elimination reaction, the more

highly substituted alkene (thermodynamically most stable)
is the more likely product of an elimination reaction
according to Zaitsev's rule. The rule is very accurate for
E1 reactions but there are many exceptions for E2
reactions.

1877 Charles Friedel, James Crafts. Friedel and Crafts

developed the Friedel-Crafts reaction involving alkylation
and acylation reactions of aromatic rings, another type of
valuable carbon-carbon bond forming reactions.

1880 Friedrich Beilstein. Beilstein systematically produced a

listing of the properties of organic compounds in a
handbook of organic chemistry later to be known as the
Beilstein database.

1881 Ludwig Claisen. Claisen discovered many important

reactions including the Claisen condensation and the
Claisen rearrangement and designed the Claisen flask.

1883 Adolf von Baeyer. von Baeyer synthesized and

determined the structure of indigo and other dyes. He also
developed a nomenclature system for cyclic systems and
synthesized the first baribiturate.
1888, 1989 Friedrich Reinitzer, Otto Lehman. The year after
Reinitzer observed the first liquid crystal, cholesterol
benzoate, Otto Lehman published a paper on the
properties of liquid crystal. In 1922 Geoges Friedel
classified liquid crystals into three categories.

1891 Vladimir Grigoryevich Shukhov. Shukov devleoped

thermal cracking. Cracking serves as the method for
providing feedstock for the synthesis of many organic
chemicals. William Burton is usually given credit for the first
commercial application of cracking. With many advantages
over thermal cracking, catalytic cracking was developed by
Eugene Jules Houdry in 1937.

1892 Emil Fisher. Fischer was responsible for many major

discoveries in organic chemistry. He elucidated the
structures of sugars, developed the Fischer projection
system for tetrahedral carbons, developed Fischer
esterification, contributed to the elucidation of protein
structure including development of the lock and key model
for the behavior of peptide catalysts.

Paul Walden. Walden made significant contributions to the

1895
study of stereochemistry including the concept of the
Walden inversion.

1900 F. A. Victor Grignard. The discovery that magnesium

reacts with organohalides to form Grignard reagents that
subsequently react with carbonyls (and other compounds)
to form carbon - carbon bonds enabled the synthesis of
many compounds. Care must be taken when running this
reaction to exclude water.
1900 Moses Gomberg. Gomberg, when trying to make
hexaphenylethane, recognized that he was the first to
prepare a stable free radical, triphenylmethyl.

1903 Mikhail Tswett (Tsvet). Tswett while performing research

on plant pigments developed the technique of column
chromatography. HPLC was a direct develpment from this
work and other types of chromatograhy including gas and
thin layer were derived from the innovative discovery of
Tswett.

1903 William W. Coblentz. Sir William Herschel discovered

infrared spectroscopy in 1800 but it was not until 1903 that
Coblentz did the ground breaking work that eventually
enabled ir to become a valuable and routine technique for
functional group determination and some structural
analysis of organic compounds.

~1910 Giacomo Luigi Ciamician. Ciamician was a pioneer in

the field of organic photochemistry. 50 years after he
initiated the use of light to energized organic chemical
reactions, the field was greatly expanded by several
researchers including George Hammond and his proteges
and Georger Porter.

1916 Gilbert Lewis. Lewis developed the concepts of electron

pairs, bonding, Lewis structures and Lewis’s acids (1923)
for atoms and molecules. He, expanded work on the
valence concepts of Richard Abegg.
1920 Wendell Latimer, Worth Rodebush. T. S. Moore and T. F.
Winmill first applied the concept of the hydrogen bond in
1912 but Latimer and Rodebush were the first to describe
hydrogen bonding. Hydrogen bonding is responsible for
many several extremely important properties including the
boiling poin of water and the structures of DNA and
proteins.

1922 Francis Aston. Aston invented the mass spectrometer, an

extremely powerful method for determining the structure
and identification of organic compounds.

1922... Christopher Ingold. Ingold opened up the field of

mechanistic studies of organic reactions while developing
descriptions and terminology for nucleophilic and
electrophilic substitution reactions.

1923 Johannes N. Brønsted, Thomas M. Lowry. Brønsted

and Lowry indepently proposed that a Brønsted acid
should be defined as a proton donor and a base as a
proton acceptor.

1928 Otto P. H. Diels, Kurt Alder. The Diels-Alder reaction is a

[4+2] cycloaddition) between a conjugated diene and a
substituted alkene to form a substituted cyclohexene.
Reactions that form carbon - carbon bonds are extremely
useful.

1929 Kathleen Lonsdale. Lonsdale proved using x-ray

chrystallography that benzene is flat and all bonds are the
same length (not alternating single and double bonds).
1930, 1934 Wallace Carothers. Carothers and Elmer Bolton
discovered neoprene and Crothers and Julian Hill
discovered nylon and the useful synthetic techniques for
producing these polymers.

1931 Eric Huckel. Hückel developed Hückel's rule that states

that a planar ring with 4n + 2 p electrons should have a
special stabilizing form of resonance called aromaticity.

1935 Louis Hammet. The Hammett equation (a free energy

relationship) enabled the calculation of a plethora of
reaction rates and equilibrium constants from a table of
substituent constants and reaction properties. The
constants also enable a comparision of the magnitudes of
substituent effects.

1938 Isidor I. Rabi, Felix Bloch, Edward Purcell. Rabi, Block

and Purcell developed the extremely powerful technique of
nuclear magnetic resonance that is currently used
routinely for the determination of the structures of organic
compounds. The concept was eventually developed into
the very valuable technique, MRI, for imaging portions of
the human body. Martin Packard was the first to record an
nmr of an organic compound, James Arnold and later
James Shoolery developed the instrumentation and John
Roberts demonstrated the applications in organic
chemistry.

1939 N. A. Izmailov, M.S. Shraiber. Ismailov and Shraiber

developed the technique of thin layer chromatography.
1940 - Robert Woodward. Woodward and his research group
1979 synthesized many natural products including quinine,
cholesterol, cortisone, strychnine, lysergic acid, reserpine,
chlorophyll, cephalosporin and colchicine and Vitamin B12.
Along the way, he developed many new synthetic methods
and the Woodward - Hoffmann rules (see Fukii - 1952 -
and Hoffmann - 1965)

1941- Archer Martin, Richard Synge, Anthony James, Fritz

1952 Prior, Erika Cremer. Martin and Synge received Nobel
prize in 1952 for development of partition chromatography
with contributions to gas chromatography by James, Prior
and Cremer.

1947 J. Bigeleisen, Maria Goeppert Mayer. Bigeleisen and

Mayer published the first paper on the kinetic isoptope
effect on reaction rates and equilbria. Use of isotope
substitution provides considerable mechanistic insight into
organic reactions.

1949 Peter Fellgett, Pierre Jacquinot. The application of

fourier transform methodolgy to ir was made possible by
the combined contributions of Fellgett and Jacquinot.

1950 Derek Barton. Barton connected the conformation of rings

including steroids to reactivity.

Roland Gohlke, F. McLafferty. Gohlke and McLafferty

1950 used a mass spectrometer as the detector for a gas
chromatograph resulting in the the very powerful and fast
technique gcms that is capable of separating and
identifying components of mixtures and providing
extensive structural information simultaneously.
1950 Lyman C. Craig. Craig invented the rotary evaporator and
other useful types of apparatus. In 1957, Büchi
commercialized the rotary evaporator.

1952 Kenichi Fukui. Fukui developed a method involving the

use of frontier molecular orbitals of explaining and
predicting the course of synchronous organic reactions.
The method was later made more practical with the
development of the Woodward - Hoffmann rules for
pericyclic reactions.

1954 Vladimir Prelog. Prelog performed ground breaking work

connecting reactivity to organic structure especially with
regard to steroisomerism. Along with Cahn and Ingold, he
developed a system for distinguishing and naming
enantiomers.

1954 Georg Wittig. The Wittig reaction for synthesizing alkenes

from carbonyls and ylides like other reactions that form
carbon - carbon bonds was a very valuable addition to the
repertoire of synthetic organic chemistry.

1955 George Hammond. The Hammond postulate suggests

that it is possible to obtain information about transition
states by examining the structure of the nearest stable
species. His research group contributed to the opening up
of the field of organic photochemistry.

1957 Elias J. Corey. Corey developed many original organic

synthetic techniques and pioneered the use of
retrosynthetic approaches. Corey was also one of the first
to use computerized approaches for organic synthesis.
1959 Herbert C. Brown. Brown developed many organoboron
reactions and the use of borohydrides for reduction. He is
most famous for the anti-Markovnikov hydroboration
reaction.

1965 Roald Hoffmann. Woodward and Hoffmann developed a

series of rules based on molecular orbitals that explain
and predict the stereochemistry of pericyclic reactions.
Also see Woodward (1940) and Fukui (1952).

1966 Richard Ernst, Weston Anderson. Ernst and Anderson

applied the use of fourier transform technology to nmr
vastly improving its sensitivity.

1985 Harold Kroto,, R. Smalley, Robert Curl. Kroto, Smalley

and Curl dicovered methods for synthesizing and
characterizing buckminister fullerene (also called bucky
balls and fullerene). This work undoutedly helped with the
discovery of nanotubes and graphene.

1986 K. C. Westaway, R. N. Gedye. Percy Spencer discovered

the potential for microwave heating in 1946 but it was not
until 1986 that microwave ovens were added to the
repertoire of heating techniques available to the organic
chemist by the publications of Westaway and Gedye.

1991 Sumio Iijima. Iijima made synthesis of carbon nanotubes

practical but his work followed on the shoulders of many
others including Radushkevich, Lukyanovich, R. Bacon,
and M. Endo. For a timeline of nanotube discoveries.
2004 Andre Geim, K. Novoselov. Geim and Novoselov
performed groundbreaking research about graphene and
its two-dimensional properties.
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