Reaction Kinetics and the Walden Inversion

Abstract

DESPITE forty years of research, much mystery still surrounds the conditions determining the occurrence or non-occurrence of the Walden inversion. This is partly due to the difficulty of relating rotation to configuration ; but it is due even more to the evident circumstance that these conditions must be intimately connected with the mechanism of substitution: it is only in comparatively recent years that the mechanism of aliphatic substitution has been fruitfully studied. In this field, mechanism has revealed itself principally through the examination of reaction kinetics ; and by this means mechanism has been brought into intelligible relation with the structures of reactants and the conditions of reaction. For details we may refer to an early note in NATURE¹, and to a number of papers on the subject which have since appeared mainly in the Journal of the Chemical Society. It is an obvious sequel to apply the same weapon, the study of kinetics, in attacking the problem of the Walden inversion; for it should certainly be possible to trace a connexion between inversion and kinetics, and thus, with the aid of the knowledge already gained, to relate inversion to mechanism and its determining factors, structure and conditions.