"The Departmental recognition award for November 2007 goes to Parag Mukhopadyay, a graduate student working with Professor David Beratan, for his work on the first prediction of a "chiral imprint" in solution. The paper was published in Angew Chemie International Edition a few months ago, where it received the VIP designation; the work was also highlighted in Science and in C and E News:
"The three-dimensional arrangement of achiral solvent molecules surrounding chiral solute molecules has been shown to make an unexpectedly large contribution to the optical properties of the solution. Achiral solvents are known to affect the experimentally measured optical rotation of chiral solutes, but the magnitude and fundamental nature of such effects were unknown until now...[the authors] find that the optical properties of a solution of methyloxirane in benzene are dominated not by the chiral solute but by the arrangement of the achiral solvent molecules (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., DOI: 10.1002/anie.200702273). They believe this to be the first evidence of a chiroptical property dominated by induced solvent dissymmetry."
Quoted from an email by Chemistry Chair
Dr. Warren Warren
