Creating complexity – the beauty and logic of synthesis

Abstract

The past decade has been a golden age for the total synthesis of natural products, marked by the conquest of some extraordinarily challenging target compounds – many of which are of significant pharmacological value. K. C. Nicolaou of The Scripps Research Institute and the University of California, San Diego, has led the field. He is driven by the passion to design elegant and efficient synthetic strategies that capture Nature at her most complex and diverse.