A name reaction is a

chemical reaction A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the chemical transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. Classically, chemical reactions encompass changes that only involve the positions of electrons in the forming and breaking ...

named after its discoverers or developers. Among the tens of thousands of organic reactions that are known, hundreds of such reactions are well-known enough to be named after people. Well-known examples include the

Grignard reaction The Grignard reaction () is an organometallic chemical reaction in which alkyl, allyl, vinyl, or aryl-magnesium halides (Grignard reagent) is added to a carbonyl group in an aldehyde or ketone. This reaction is important for the formation of ...

, the

Sabatier reaction The Sabatier reaction or Sabatier process produces methane and water from a reaction of hydrogen with carbon dioxide at elevated temperatures (optimally 300–400 °C) and pressures (perhaps 3 MPa ) in the presence of a nickel catalyst. It w ...

, the

Wittig reaction The Wittig reaction or Wittig olefination is a chemical reaction of an aldehyde or ketone with a triphenyl phosphonium ylide called a Wittig reagent. Wittig reactions are most commonly used to convert aldehydes and ketones to alkenes. Mos ...

, the

Claisen condensation The Claisen condensation is a carbon–carbon bond forming reaction that occurs between two esters or one ester and another carbonyl compound in the presence of a strong base, resulting in a β-keto ester or a β-diketone. It is named after Ra ...

, the Friedel-Crafts acylation, and the Diels-Alder reaction. Books have been published devoted exclusively to name reactions;Alfred Hassner, C. Stumer. ''Organic syntheses based on name reactions''. Elsevier, 2002. Li, Jie Jack. ''Name Reactions: A Collection of Detailed Reaction Mechanisms''. Springer, 2003. the

Merck Index ''The Merck Index'' is an encyclopedia of chemicals, drugs and biologicals with over 10,000 monograph on single substances or groups of related compounds published online by the Royal Society of Chemistry. History The first edition of the Mer ...

, a chemical encyclopedia, also includes an appendix on name reactions. As organic chemistry developed during the 20th century, chemists started associating synthetically useful reactions with the names of the discoverers or developers; in many cases, the name is merely a mnemonic. Some cases of reactions that were not really discovered by their namesakes are known. Examples include the

Pummerer rearrangement The Pummerer rearrangement is an organic reaction whereby an alkyl sulfoxide rearranges to an α- acyloxy–thioether (mono thioacetal-ester) in the presence of acetic anhydride. The stoichiometry of the reaction is: :RS(O)CHR'2 + Ac2O → ...

, the Pinnick oxidation and the

Birch reduction The Birch reduction is an organic reaction that is used to convert arenes to cyclohexadienes. The reaction is named after the Australian chemist Arthur Birch and involves the organic reduction of aromatic rings in an amine solvent (traditionally ...

. Although systematic approaches for naming reactions based on the reaction mechanism or the overall transformation exist (such as the

IUPAC Nomenclature for Transformations The IUPAC Nomenclature for Transformations is a methodology for naming a chemical reaction. Traditionally a chemical reaction especially in organic chemistry is named after its inventor, the so-called name reaction, to name just a few: Knoevenagel ...

), the more descriptive names are often unwieldy or not specific enough, so people names are often more practical for efficient communication.

References

{{wiktionary, name reaction

See also

References