A Little Shakespearean Musing on a Rainy Day...

To know or not to know; that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the lab to suffer the slings and arrows of Organic Chemistry,
Or take arms against a sea of molecules, and by functional groups, react them?

To precipitate: to separate; no more;
And by separate to say to end the thousand column fractions the reaction is heir to.
'tis a purification devoutly to be wished.

To precipitate, to separate,
To separate again: Aye there's the rub,
For in that desired fraction what enantiomers may come?

The structure above is that of pleiadiene, first synthesized by V. Boekelheide and G. Vick in 1956 (1).  It reminds me of the skull that Hamlet finds so endearing.  Interestingly "pleiad means a group of seven illustrious or brilliant persons"(2), just scholarly enough for Shakespeare, me thinks.

(1) V. Boekelheide and G. K. Vick J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1956, 78, 653-658.
(2) A. Nickon and E. F. Silversmith Organic Chemistry The Name Game; Pergamon Press: New York, 1987; pp172-173.