Molecular chirality (Pasteur's tartrate resolution)
Quiralidad molecular: separación de los tartratos enantiómeros
- Date
- 1848 · confidence high
- Place
- École Normale Supérieure, Paris
- Credited to
- Louis Pasteur
- People
- 👤 Louis Pasteur1822–1895
- Field
- Matter & energy
What was discovered
Pasteur hand-separates hemihedral crystals of sodium ammonium tartrate and shows that they rotate the plane of polarised light in opposite directions: optical activity originates in molecular asymmetry. Stereochemistry is born.
What it led to
- Stereochemistry (van 't Hoff, Le Bel)
- Enantiopure drugs
- Asymmetric synthesis
Built on
- Biot's polarimetry
- Haüy's crystallography
Made possible
- Tetrahedral carbon and stereochemistry1874
- Walden inversion1896
- Asymmetric catalysis (Knowles, Noyori, Sharpless)1968-1980
- resolution of racemates
- analytical polarimetry