The utility of chloroform as both a solvent and a hydrogen atom donor in Barton reductive decarboxylation of a range of carboxylic acids was recently demonstrated (Ko, EJ et al. Org. Lett. 2011, 13, 1944). In the present work, a combination of electronic structure calculations, direct dynamics calculations, and experimental studies was carried out to investigate how chloroform acts as a hydrogen atom donor in Barton reductive decarboxylations and to ...