Harrisonin

Harrisonin is a fictional organic compound created for instructional use in chemistry and related sciences. It is commonly described in textbooks and teaching materials as a natural product-like molecule with a bicyclic framework that includes a lactone ring.

Origin and naming: The name honors a fictional chemist, Dr. Harrison, and the compound is widely used as a teaching placeholder for discussing structure elucidation and synthetic planning.

Chemical characteristics: Harrisonin is described as a medium-sized molecule (roughly 260–320 g/mol). It is depicted as a colorless, oily liquid with limited water solubility and greater solubility in organic solvents. In spectroscopic analyses, the lactone carbonyl appears in IR around 1735–1750 cm^-1; 1H NMR shows multiple aliphatic multiplets; 13C NMR includes several sp3 carbons and a carbonyl.

Synthesis and uses: In textbooks, Harrisonin can be prepared via a short sequence of common reactions from readily available precursors, illustrating retrosynthetic analysis and functional group interconversions. It is commonly used in problem sets and exams to teach NMR interpretation, mass spectrometry fragmentation, and reaction planning.

Cultural and educational role: While fictional, Harrisonin serves as a didactic tool to demonstrate how chemists approach structure determination and synthesis, without requiring access to real natural products.