Organic Chemistry of Carbonyl Compounds

The carbonyl group (C=O) sits at the heart of most organic reactivity, and this course is essentially a deep dive into how that single functional group drives the chemistry of aldehydes, ketones, acids, and their biological cousins like carbohydrates, lipids, and amino acids. Building directly on CHEM 232, you'll spend the semester pushing electrons through mechanisms — nucleophilic addition, enolate chemistry, condensations, conjugate additions — and predicting how to make and break C–C bonds at and around the carbonyl. It's the bridge between sophomore organic and any later work in biochemistry, medicinal chemistry, or synthesis, because once you can reason about carbonyls fluently, most of biology and the pharmaceutical industry stops looking like magic.