About

Named reactions form a core part of the synthetic chemist’s toolkit. These well-established transformations have played — and continue to play — a critical role in organic synthesis, particularly in areas such as total synthesis and drug discovery (including both medicinal and process chemistry). Often named after the chemists who discovered or developed them, these reactions serve as reliable strategies for constructing complex molecules and tackling challenging synthetic problems. Familiarity with both the chemical outcomes and the underlying mechanisms offers valuable insight into general reactivity patterns, enabling chemists to devise new transformations and streamline synthetic planning.

While reviewing existing resources on named reactions, I noticed two major limitations:

❌  A lack of color in reaction schemes and mechanisms, which makes it harder to intuitively follow bond changes and key steps.

❌  Limited filtering and search options — most tools only allow alphabetical browsing by reaction name, without the ability to search by reaction type, starting material / product or historical context.

This website was created to address these limitations:

✅  Named reactions schemes and mechanisms are color-coded to facilitate tracking of atoms and fragments from the starting materials via intermediates to products, making it easier to understand and remember each transformation.

✅  It offers a modern, searchable, and visually enhanced interface for exploring named reactions. Users can browse reactions by name, type, year, or starting materials and product types.

Whether you're a student, researcher, or practicing chemist, this platform aims to make learning and using named reactions more efficient and intuitive.

This section shows how color is used to help track atom or group movement throughout a reaction mechanism:

Color-coded reaction scheme

Mechanisms

Few examples how mechanisms are simplified:

Color-coded reaction scheme

Named reactions can be explored in two complementary ways: a basic alphabetical sort and an advanced search. The former lets you quickly browse reactions by their first letter, while the latter allows filtering by reaction name, year, reaction type, starting materials, or products. Starting materials and products are classified by functional groups (e.g., ester, imidate, amine, β-amino ketone) or scaffold classes (e.g., indole, thiophene, pyrrole). More complex goups constructed from simpler functional groups, e.g. β-keto ester or an ι,β-unsaturated ester are not doubly counted as both ester and ketone, or ester and alkene, respectively (with some exceptions). Multiple options can be selected at once, allowing to search broadly or refine results narrowly. More specific starting materials, such as o-nitrostyrene or 2-acetoxyacetophenone, are tagged under broader categories: nitro arene and vinyl arene, or aryl ester and aryl ketone, respectively.

There are many named reactions out there, and I will continue to expand and improve this resource over time. Feel free to contact me with suggestions, corrections, or questions.

Begin by choosing a letter or jump into the advanced search for more options.