Vol. 27 No. 6
November-December 2005

Organic Synthesis—PAC Special Topic Issue

Tamejiro Hiyama, Conference Editor

Pure and Applied Chemistry
Vol. 77, No. 7, pp. 1087–1296 (2005)

What is the future of organic synthesis? The invention of unprecedented drugs and materials has enriched and expanded the horizons of the human experience in formerly unimagined ways, and owes much to the ever-increasing ingenuity of organic synthesis, and recognition and attainment of new synthetic targets. The impact of organic synthesis on cognate disciplines and on general advancement of science and technology is definitely enormous and will be further strengthened by future challenges and opportunities.

Professor Minoru Isobe (Nagoya University, conference cochair and president of the IUPAC Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry Division) and Professor J. Fraser Stoddart (UCLA, recipient of the Nagoya Gold Medal).

The July 2005 issue of PAC is a collection of reviews and research papers based on lectures presented at the 15th International Conference on Organic Synthesis (ICOS-15), held in Nagoya, Japan, 1–6 August 2004, on the theme of organic synthesis. The papers capture the vitality and ongoing promise of organic synthesis, and offer readers an opportunity to participate vicariously in another milestone in its advancement.

A lecture program comprising 10 plenary and 20 invited presentations contributed to a truly exciting conference experience, and the 21 speakers who kindly agreed to contribute papers based upon their presentations have made it possible to capture some of the excitement in this issue of PAC.

The Nagoya Gold Medallist, J.F. Stoddart, used the occasion to share an absorbing and very personal perspective on molecular assembly and materials. One prominent lecture topic was advances in the total synthesis of biologically active natural products that have extremely complex structures and often require development of novel synthetic methods. A number of lecturers did justice to this theme with presentations on a variety of extremely elegant and sophisticated new developments in methodology, based upon organometallic catalysts and/or reagents. Finally, the broad theme of asymmetric synthesis using organometallic complexes with chiral ligands or chiral organocatalysts was developed in conjunction with combinatorial methodology, which is shown to be highly effective in optimizing catalytic systems.

In his autobiographical essay, J. Fraser Stoddard evokes how his own interest in host/guest and supramolecular chemistry gradually evolved over two decades into a fascination with the chemistry of the mechanical bond. Stoddart traces his hurly-burly life as a scientific nomad “through thick and thin from the Athens of the North to the City of Angels, with brief and not so brief interludes on the edge of the Canadian Shield, in the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, on the Plains of Cheshire beside the Wirral, and in the Midlands in the heartland of Albion.”

> more about PAC Special Topic Issues

www.iupac.org/publications/pac/2005/7707