Abstract: There is long-standing evidence that in the general base catalyzed addition of alcohols to formaldehyde, C.-0 bond formation and proton transfer occur simultaneously. Structure-energy relations for this reaction are complicated. The slopes of Br~ nsted plots vary greatly, even for structurally similar alcohols, and plots of log k vs. pK, of the alcohols go through minima. The data thus provide good material for testing the author's recent theory ...
