The Williamson ether synthesis is an organic reaction, forming an ether from an organohalide and an alcohol. This reaction was developed by Alexander Williamson in 1850. Typically it involves the reaction of an alkoxide ion with a primary alkyl halide via an SN2 reaction. This reaction is important in the history of organic chemistry because it helped prove the structure of ethers.
The general reaction mechanism is as follows:
An example is the reaction of sodium ethoxide with chloroethane to form diethyl ether and sodium chloride:
- Na+C2H5O− + C2H5Cl → C2H5OC2H5 + Na+Cl−
Read more about Williamson Ether Synthesis: Scope, Conditions, Side Reactions
Famous quotes containing the words williamson, ether and/or synthesis:
“What do you do for your living?
Are you forgiving, giving shelter?
Follow your heart; love will find you;
truth will unbind you;
Sing out a song of the soul.”
—Cris Williamson (20th century)
“Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly
different from myself,
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“The invention of photography provided a radically new picture-making process—a process based not on synthesis but on selection. The difference was a basic one. Paintings were made—constructed from a storehouse of traditional schemes and skills and attitudes—but photographs, as the man on the street put, were taken.”
—Jean Szarkowski (b. 1925)