Biomimetic Chemistry, awarded annually by the ACS, is named in his honor. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He is also a foreign member of the Royal Society and an honorary member of many other scientific bodies around the world. In 2012, his paper "Evidence for the Likely Origin of Homochirality in Amino Acids, Sugars, and Nucleosides on Prebiotic Earth" was retracted from the Journal of the American Chemical Society due to copyright concerns, leading to a debate on self-plagiarism and the distinction between a personal review and a paper. Synthesis of cyclopropenyl cation First prepared by mixing 3-chlorocyclopropene with antimony pentachloride, aluminum trichloride, or silver fluoroborate. Carbon-13 NMR shows singlets with a coupling constant of 265 ± 1 Hz. The authors suggest that this coupling constant is suggestive that the C–H bond is 53% s character. The overall bonding framework then consists of sp orbitals to all hydrogens, two sp3 orbitals for each sigma bond, and one p orbital for the π framework. D-Orbital Conjugation It had been suggested that carbanion-sulfone double bonds will not show aromatic character-primarily as a result of the nodes present in d-orbitals. Straight chain analogs were chosen based on the comparable acidity, combined with previous studies indicating that steric effects are largely negligible. The straight chain analogs are shown below. Compound II was treated with dimethoxyethane / D2O / triethylamine and was found to be completely deuterated upon recovery. The deuterated compound was then treated with butyllithium in ether, with dimethoxyethane and 2N HCl regenerating the starting material. The cyclic analog (III, shown below) was deuterated in the same manner, and addition of deuterated I, followed by quenching to regenerate the protonated form, was analyzed by NMR. There was one proton peak, and it was shown to equilibrate equally between compounds II and III, indicating that compounds had similar acidity. From this result, the researchers concluded that compound III was not aromatic, because stabilizing effect of aromaticity on the anion should increase the acidity of the parent compound. The ester analogs were prepared (IV and V) and were found to be acidic enough for titration. The compounds were titrated under nitrogen with 0.2N NaOH with a Beckman Model GS meter with an E-2 electrode. Compound IV was found to have a pKa of