Preorganization—From Solvents to Spherands

This article assesses the importance of molecular preorganization to the rapidly developing field of complexation involving designed synthetic organic compounds. Since its birth as a science, organic chemistry has drawn heavily on biological chemistry as a vast storehouse of evolutionary structures, reactions, and control mechanisms that serve as inspiration for designed organic‐compounds mimics. Biological systems, through highly structured complexation, accomplish complicated tasks. The receptor sites of enzymes, the genes, the antibodies, and ionophores possess high degree of preorganization. In other words, their functional groups act cooperatively as binding or catalytic sites which are largely collected and oriented prior to complexation.—The strength of the organic chemist derives from his ability to design organic compounds, organic reactions, synthetic sequences, and test systems to evaluate hypotheses. The design of highly structured complexs and the discovery of the rules that govern their behavior are described here. Research in this field is particularly rewarding because scientific and aesthetic content merge and become visible in the structures of many of the complexes.