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Kurt Alder
1902–1958 · Germany · 20th century
Nobel Chemistry 1950
German chemist who, with his teacher Otto Diels, discovered the cycloaddition of dienes and dienophiles — the Diels–Alder reaction — the most famous way to build six-membered rings.
Nobel Prize work
Shared the prize with Otto Diels for the discovery and development of diene synthesis: a [4+2] cycloaddition in which a conjugated diene and a dienophile combine in one step to a cyclohexene ring with predictable stereochemistry. The reaction became indispensable for synthesizing natural products, drugs and polymers.
Fields
Related topics
Electrophilic aromatic substitution, radicals, pericyclic reactions
Unify aromatic substitution, radical-chain chemistry, and concerted pericyclic reactions through their distinct electron-flow rules and selectivity principles.
Total synthesis
Total synthesis constructs a complex natural or designed molecule from simple, defined starting materials, integrating route design, selectivity, mechanism, and practical execution.