Catalytic Enantioselective Diels-Alder Reactions: Methods, Mechanistic Fundamentals, Pathways, and Applications

One hundred years after the birth of Kurt Alder and seventy-five years after the discovery of his famous reaction, one of the most important and fascinating transformations in chemistry, research on that process continues to surprise, excite, delight, and inform the chemical community. This article is based on presentations given first at the University of Cologne, Germany (Kurt Alder lecture, 1992), then at the Roger Adams Award Symposium (1993), and later at the Bürgenstock Conference of 2001, and describes research by our group on the development and understanding of enantioselective versions of the Diels-Alder reactions. The elements of this review include (1) development of new chiral Lewis acid catalysts…