The field of phase transfer catalysis is a tribute to the chemists involved in process development research. Phase transfer catalysis is a solution to numerous cost and yield problems encountered regularly in industrial laboratories. In fact, much of the early work in this area was conducted by industrial chemists although the work was not labelled phase transfer catalysis at the time. We certainly do not intend to minimize the contributions of academic chemists to this field, but it is an unalterable fact that much of the early understanding and many of the early advances came from...

The application of silicon reagents in organic synthesis has grown at an increasingly rapid rate over the last twenty years. This has been the result of truly international interest. Signifi- cant contributions have been made by Japanese, Russian, Ger- man, French, English, American, Swiss and Canadian as well as by chemists from many other countries. This monograph attempts to comprehensively cover this field. Some seventeen hundred articles reporting contributions by over eighteen hundred scientists are summarized. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that interesting and important work has been...