Discovery of Novel Synthetic Methodologies and Reagents during Natural Product Synthesis in the Post-Palytoxin Era

Reagents and novel synthetic methodologies that were employed to bring about the synthesis of natural products are discussede, focusing on the strychnine structural elucidation in 1818. Stereochemical correlations observed in strychnine that were made in two different X-ray crystallographic reports published in 1951 are also addressed.