Icilio Guareschi and his amazing “1897 reaction”

• Gian Cesare Tron,
• Alberto Minassi,
• Giovanni Sorba,
• Mara Fausone and
• Giovanni Appendino

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2021, 17, 1335–1351, doi:10.3762/bjoc.17.93

• , inorganic, and analytical branches and systematically crosses the divide between pure and applied science as well as between the history of chemistry and the personal contributions to its development. Keywords: Guareschi; history of chemistry; hydrocarbons; name reactions; pyridine; Introduction Modern

• topics, overcoming not only the boundaries of the traditional partition of chemistry in the organic, inorganic, and analytical branches but also crossing the divide between pure and applied science and between the history of chemistry and the contribution to its development. Guareschi, just like Liebig

• , seems to have cultivated an interest in every topic where a chemical connection could be identified, from geology to botany and from medicine to agriculture and nutrition. There is, undoubtedly, no shortage of eclectic characters in the history of chemistry, but the combination of interests for pure and

Back to the future: Why we need enzymology to build a synthetic metabolism of the future

• Tobias J. Erb

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2019, 15, 551–557, doi:10.3762/bjoc.15.49

• ; Introduction One of the most important and disruptive events in the history of chemistry was its transformation from a purely analytical-descriptive into a synthetic-constructive discipline, which took place more than one hundred years ago [1][2]. Understanding the elemental composition of matter as well as