It’s tournament season in sports these days, and it is no different with us at the DOC. Several of us were arguing the other day about our favorite named reaction, and the discussion got rather animated, in no small part, due to the total subjectivity of the question. So, we decided to put it to those of you who know best – our Division members (and friends!) – and are now excited to announce the Division of Organic Chemistry Named Reaction Tournament of Champions (not to overhype it or anything). We assembled 32 named reactions, and over 5 rounds of voting by you, we will crown the “champion” named reaction over a span of 10 days, with the first round of voting on December 10-11. From then on, every two days, we will tabulate the winners of the round and move the winners to the next stage, until we crown the winner on December 19 at midnight (ET). You can vote at the DOC Reactions Tournament Page, and if you want a printable bracket, you can download that here. For each of the reactions, we included links to a description of the reaction to the wiki reference page, organicreactions.org, and organicchemistrydata.org, so feel free to share with students or others who may not have learned many named reactions yet.
What we would love for you to do, is to post your choices or comments (which named reactions were snubbed by the selection committee? was there an upset?) on any social media site using the #amplifyorganic tag so that we can all join in the discussion and maybe share some of those animated opinions with our networks. While we would never suggest you do anything untoward, we’d never know if there was an office pool. In any case, please vote, share with others and have fun with this!