Established in 1960, Advances in Heterocyclic Chemistry is the definitive serial in the area--one of great importance to organic chemists, polymer chemists, and many biological scientists. Written by established authorities in the field, the comprehensive reviews combine descriptive chemistry and mechanistic insight to yield an understanding of how the chemistry drives the properties. Degenerate ring transformations of heterocycles are classified as reactions in which a heterocyclic system is converted into the same heterocyclic system. This monograph covers an authoritative, comprehensive overview of a host of degenerate ring transformations in five- and six-membered heterocycles. It shows how by the use of 15N-labeled, 13C-labeled, or selectively substituted compounds these degenerate rign transformations can be discovered and how most of the results can be explained by the Addition Nucleophile, Ring Opening, and Ring Closure [ANRORC] mechanism. Another main topic of the monograph is the occurrence of degenerate ring transformations.

Author Biography

Professor Dr. H.C. van der Plas received his Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam. He has served the Agricultural University at Wageningen, The Netherlands, from 1966 as a Reader, from 1970 as Professor of Organic Chemistry, and from 1978-1982 and 1989-1995 as Rector Magnificus. His research interest is in chemistry, mainly in the field of nucleophilic substitution and ring transformations. The results of his scientific results are set down in nearly 400 research papers, 20 review articles, and in two monographs, and a book (together with O. Chupakhin and V. Charushin), Nucleophilic Substitution of Aromatic Hydrogen. Alan Katritzky, educated at Oxford, held faculty positions at Cambridge and East Anglia before migrating in 1980 to the University of Florida, where he is Kenan Professor and Director for the Institute for Heterocyclic Compounds. He has trained more than 1000 graduate students and post-docs, and lectured and consulted world-wide. He led the team, which produced "Comprehensive Heterocyclic Chemistry" and its sequels, "CHEC-II" and "CHEC-III", has edited "Advances in Heterocyclic Chemistry, Vols. 1 through 100" and conceived the plan for "Comprehensive Organic Functional Group Transformations". He founded Arkat-USA, a non-profit which publishes "Archive for Organic Chemistry" (ARKIVOC) electronic journal completely free to authors and readers at (www.arkat-usa.org). Honors include 14 honorary doctorates from 11 countries and membership or foreign membership of the National Academies of Britain, Catalonia, India, Poland, Russia and Slovenia.