Nearly a century has passed since Claisen2 discovered the alkoxide-induced condensation of benzaldehyde to benzyl benzoate. Somewhat later, Tishchenko3 demonstrated that a similar condensation obtains with aliphatic aldehydes. Still later, Nord and co-workers* observed that, depending on the basicity of the metal alkoxide, the Claisen-Tishchenko condensation of simple aliphatic aldehydes bearing an a-hydrogen can also lead to glycol ...
