Dr. Robert Grubbs developed a reaction called olefin methathesis which utilizes an organometallic catalyst named after him to join two carbon atoms through a double bond. The reaction takes place under mild conditions and has a wide scope, fundamentally transforming pharmaceutical, materials, and polymer chemistry. For this he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2005. He is remembered not only as a brilliant chemist, but also a kind and approachable man. |
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Computer-aided synthesis programs are receiving increased attention for their ability to identify synthetic routes which may be more efficient or overlooked by chemists. A recent program, Chematica, used artificial intelligence to design routes to 8 pharmacological targets. Now an update to Chematica added almost 100,000 rules written by chemists to aid the computer algorithm in favoring commonly applied methods. This enables the algorithm to avoid steps that may be impractical in lab while still using its machine learning to identify steps which haven't been considered. A comparison of the previous program with this hybrid approach showed the human-assisted program was more effective at identifying routes with transformations that were underrepresented in the literature. Currently these synthetic routes have not been verified.
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December 2021
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