Biography
Satinder Vir Kessar, Indian organic chemist (Hoshiarpur 09 June 1932 –
Developed highly effective routes for total synthesis of many classes of natural products and compounds of medicinal and structural interest e.g. heterosteroids, steroidal alkaloids and sapogenins, azasteroids and pyridine, isoquinoline, benzazepine, morphinan and quinuclidine nucleus based alkaloids and drugs
Synthesized new heterocyclic systems
Investigated new thermal routes for generating oxoquinodimethane intermediates such as intramolecular desilysation of arylsulphoxides for benzyne generation (1987-92)
Elucidated mechanistic pathways including region diastereo and enantio selectivity of these transformations
Developed benzyne cyclisation of haloanils and Lewis acid-promoted lithiation as synthetic procedures
Introduced the concept of Lewis acid activation of amines
Showed that intramolecular linking of benzyne with aryl rings is possible provided anionic activation is inbuilt into the cyclisation substrate (1973-8)
Developed a methodology for elaboration of tertiary amines and nitrogen heterocycles
Obtained the photoconversion of a related aminoaldehyde to a 10-membered ring alkaloidal framework (1992)
OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS
With S.M. Mukerji. A novel synthesis of 4-methyl-1,2 benzanthracene. Nature 174:844, 1954
Photochemistry of α-ketoimines. Novel synthesis of xylopinine. Chem. Comm. J. Chem. Soc. P.855, 1978
Novel use of organosilanes in natural product synthesis. Pure Appl. Chem. 62:1397, 1990
A novel route to condensed polynuclear systems. Reality and illusion of benzyne intermediacy. Acc. Chem. Res. 11:283, 1978
PATENT
With S.K. Kulkarni, R. Jain, S. Prehan, S.K. Magadi et al. Novel monoamine re-uptake inhibitor WO2009118765A2 (2009)
