Creating complexity - the beauty and logic of synthesis

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.(1-4) He is driven by the passion to design elegant and efficient synthetic strategies that capture Nature at her most complex and diverse.