In 1988, when Andrzej Rajca started his research program at Kansas State University, organic magnets was one of the two major projects. Although initially the project was focused on the "planarized" 1,3-connected polyarylmethyls, a simple synthetic scheme of a star-branched polyarylmethyl was drawn for a bright new student, who was more interested in Physical Chemistry. However, it turned out that the student was not allowed to join the group early, and later changed his mind to join the physical chemistry group. This was a big blow for a mint assistant professor, so he jumped into the lab and started the project on his own. Here is the synthetic scheme. This work was published as back-to-back J. Am. Chem. Soc. communications.

Since then, the professor has been addicted to the lab, and always remember this positive outcome as an important step in his research program.

In fact, this work laid solid foundation for the Rajca research program. This work demonstrated an efficient method for generation of carbopolyanions (carbanion method), which were cleanly converted to polyradicals. High spin polyarylmethyl polyradicals became the main project in the Rajca Research Group. Numerous high spin polyarylmethyl polyradicals have been prepared since then.