Woodward-Hoffmann rules
Reglas de Woodward-Hoffmann (conservación de la simetría orbital)
- Date
- 1965 · confidence high
- Place
- Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
- Credited to
- Robert B. Woodward and Roald Hoffmann; frontier orbital theory by Kenichi Fukui (1952)
- People
- 👤 Roald Hoffmann1937–👤 Robert Burns Woodward1917–1979
- Field
- Matter & energy
What was discovered
The symmetry of molecular orbitals determines whether a pericyclic reaction is thermally or photochemically allowed and with what stereochemistry. It joins quantum chemistry with synthetic practice.
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1981 (Hoffmann and Fukui); Woodward had died in 1979.
What it led to
- Theoretical organic chemistry
- Organic photochemistry
- Design of pericyclic reactions
Built on
- Molecular orbital theory1928-1932
- Total synthesis of vitamin B121972
- Fukui's frontier orbitals
- synthesis of vitamin B12
Made possible
- Total synthesis of vitamin B121972
- synthesis of vitamin B12
- molecular photoswitches