Abstract
Although chiral atrolactic acid has been the subject of extensive studies by Prelog1 and others,2 there is no simple method to obtain either enantiomer in high purity. During the course of an investigation designed to assess the utility of chiral oxazolines3 as vehicles for asymmetric syntheses, we encountered an efficient technique to obtain either R or S atrolactic acid 4 from a single chiral precursor.