Description

The traditional approach to teaching Organic Chemistry/ taken by most of the textbooks that are currently available/ is to focus primarily on the reactions of laboratory synthesis/ with much less discussion - in the central chapters/ at least - of biological molecules and reactions. This is despite the fact that/ in many classrooms/ a majority of students are majoring in Biology or Health Sciences rather than in Chemistry/ and are presumably taking the course in order to learn about the chemistry that takes place in living things. In an effort to address this disconnect/ I have developed a textbook for a two-semester/ sophomore-level course in Organic Chemistry in which biological chemistry takes center stage. For the most part/ the text covers the core concepts of organic structure/ structure determination/ and reactivity in the standard order. What is different is the context: biological chemistry is fully integrated into the explanation of central principles/ and as much as possible the in-chapter and end-of-chapter problems are taken from the biochemical literature. Many laboratory synthesis reactions are also covered/ generally in parallel with their biochemical counterparts - but it is intentionally the biological chemistry that comes first.