Love Story: Oxygen in Organic Chemistry

Abstract

The juxtaposition of the 200th anniversary of the discovery of oxygen by Priestley and the 100th anniversary of the beginning of modern organic chemistry, if such can be said to date from the van't Hoff-Le Bel formulation of the tetrahedral carbon, provides an interesting opportunity for assessment of the present position of oxygen in organic chemistry. The literature relating to oxygen and its interactions with organic compounds has grown at a fantastic pace over the past 70 years as judged by the number of entries under "oxygen" in the Chemical Abstracts Collective Indexes. Because some chemists appear to believe that organic chemistry is reaching something akin to old age, if not senility, it seems fair to ask whether the pace of significant discoveries or developments regarding oxygen and organic compounds is slowing down and whether research in this specific area is still really worthwhile and relevant to science and especially to the society that supports scientific research. Perhaps by considering this one example, we can shed some light on the larger question as to whether or not research in other areas of organic chemistry, which also have been rapidly expanding, deserves continued encouragement as well. We wish then to see something about what has happened over the years in research on the interactions of oxygen and organic compounds, what is the present state of affairs, and what are the problems of the future.