Spectroscopic and computational tools for the conformational analysis of organic molecules

With the advent of more sophisticated analytical techniques and with the aid of the raising power of computational chemistry, the research field of conformational analysis grew in importance and gained audience and reliability in the vast majority of the chemistry research fields, up to become a fundamental tool for the interpretation of complex reactions such as metal catalysis and organocatalysis, for the design of novel catalysts, as well as a workhorse in the pharmaceutical and pharmacological research. The first part of the chapter will focus on one the experimental tools employed in conformational analysis (NMR), while the second part will deal with some computational methods used nowadays for the conformational analysis. The third section will present some examples taken from the recent literature where theoretical and experimental methods work as synergic tools for a target of the modern conformational analysis, that is the determination of the absolute configuration.