Courses Taught by Paul Blakemore:–

The table below gives brief details for courses taught by Paul, present and up-coming, within the Department of Chemistry at Oregon State University.

Further information, and web-based content for these instructional courses, can be found on Blackboard (course registration required to access).

course

Hypothesis, Evidence, & Argument in Organic Chemistry

CH632 is the final segment in the CH630/1/2 core sequence of advanced level organic chemistry courses offered to graduate students at OSU. Successful completion of this course is a program requirement for all organic division graduate students within the Department of Chemistry. CH632 focuses on modern methods used to effect functional group interconversions within the context of target directed synthesis.

The era of organotransition metal chemistry began with the discovery of ferrocene in the 1950's, and since that time the field has rapidly advanced to such a point that transition metal mediated reactions permeate virtually every aspect of modern synthetic organic chemistry. Transition metal complexes of organic molecules react in distinctive ways that are not governed by the usual "rules" of traditional synthetic chemistry: an understanding of these pathways is essential to truly appreciate the potential power of such transformations and also their inherent limitations. This upper level graduate course will provide a thorough grounding in the principles of organotransition metal chemistry, beginning with fundamental considerations relating to electronic structure and basic reactivity modes, then moving on to advanced applications of transition metal mediated reactions in synthesis. An exhaustive coverage of the synthetic subject matter will not be attempted, but rather a selection of metals and some of their most closely associated reaction types will be featured. Emphasis will be placed on methods not covered in detail during the CH630/1/2 sequence (a preferred prerequisite for this class) which are nevertheless genuinely synthetically useful. Reaction types wherein the transition metal center merely acts as a Lewis acid will not be covered.