Introduction

Abstract

The rate of advance in areas of science is seldom constant. Usually certain fields effloresce with activity because of the realization that solutions are possible to long standing important problems. So it is now with asymmetric catalysis, a field which promises to change profoundly the strategic thinking of synthetic chemists. As this Report will show, reagents which can induce catalytic enantiocontrol of chemical transformations could represent the ultimate synthetic method. Nearly all synthetic strategies of complex molecules involve steps which require enantiocontrol and, in many cases, a specific catalytic transformation embodying enantiocontrol has enormous advantages in terms of the rate and economy of the reaction.