Thirty Six Years of Research on the Selective Reduction and Hydroboration

From 1975 to 2011, for thirty six years, the author and his collaborators have developed a variety of reducing and hydroborating agents, and applied them to organic synthesis, which involves the 1,2-reduction of <TEX>α</TEX>,<TEX>β</TEX>-unsaturated carbonyl compounds, stereoselective reduction of cycloalkanones, regioselective ring-opening of epoxides, partial reduction of carboxylic acid derivatives to aldehydes, regioselective addition to carbon-carbon multiple bonds, etc. by utilizing metal hydrides and the newly-devised the Meerwein-Ponndorf-Verley (MPV) type reagents. Such developments provide a new synthetic methodology making possible valuable selective reductions and hydroborations, not practical previously.