Georg Wittig
1897–1987 · Germany · Born in the 1800s
Nobel Chemistry 1979
German organic chemist whose Wittig reaction gave synthesis a clean way to install C=C double bonds from carbonyls.
Nobel Prize work
Shared the prize with Herbert C. Brown for developing phosphorus- and boron-containing compounds into important synthetic reagents. Wittig discovered that phosphorus ylides convert carbonyl compounds into alkenes — the Wittig reaction, still a standard tool for building carbon–carbon double bonds.
Fields
Related topics
Electrophilic and nucleophilic addition
Understand how electrophiles add to π-rich alkenes and how nucleophiles add to polarized π bonds such as carbonyls, including regiochemical and stereochemical outcomes.
Retrosynthetic analysis
Retrosynthesis plans a synthesis backward from a target by identifying strategic bond disconnections and mapping the resulting synthons to real reagents.