Abstract
Until the early 1960s, some of the greatest organic chemists of this century honed and displayed their chemical skills by elucidating the structures of increasingly complicated natural products of the <1000 Dalton molecular range. Chemical knowledge, intuition, and laboratory skill were responsible for the solution of these problems. But as the number and power of new physical methods increased, structure elucidation has turned from chemistry into applied spectroscopy and computer-driven X-ray crystallography. What are the costs and rewards associated with these methodological changes and what intellectual and practical motivation now inspires modern natural product chemists?
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Djerassi, C. (1997). Natural Product Structure Elucidation: 1950 → 2000. In: Fleischhacker, W., Schönfeld, T. (eds) Pioneering Ideas for the Physical and Chemical Sciences. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0268-9_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0268-9_2
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