Von Richter reaction

The von Richter reaction, also named von Richter rearrangement, is a name reaction in the organic chemistry. It is named after Victor von Richter, who discovered this reaction in year 1871. It is the reaction of aromatic nitro compounds with potassium cyanide in aqueous ethanol to give the product of cine substitution (ring substitution resulting in the entering group positioned adjacent to the previous location of the leaving group) by a carboxyl group.^[1][2][3] Although it is not generally synthetically useful due to the low chemical yield and formation of numerous side products, its mechanism was of considerable interest, eluding chemists for almost 100 years before the currently accepted one was proposed.