The reaction is named after its inventors, Raymond Urgel Lemieux and William Summer Johnson, who published it in 1956.
The Lemieux–Johnson reaction ceases at the aldehyde stage of oxidation and therefore produces the same results as ozonolysis.
The classical Lemieux–Johnson oxidation often generates many side products, resulting in low reaction yields; however the addition of non-nucleophilic bases, such as 2,6-lutidine, can improve on this.
[6] The development of the Lemieux–Johnson oxidation was preceded by an analogous process, developed by Lemieux and Ernst Von Rudloff (sometimes called the Lemieux-Von Rudloff reaction), which used an aqueous solution of sodium periodate with a low (catalytic) concentration of potassium permanganate.
[7] This mixture became known as Lemieux reagent[8][9] and has been used to determine the position of double bonds and for preparing carbonyl compounds.