Included in this set of vignettes are the winners of the Arthur C. Cope Award and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Awards. The Cope Award recognizes and encourages excellence in organic chemistry; it consists of a medal, a cash prize of $25,000, and an unrestricted research grant of $150,000 to be assigned by the recipient to any university or research institution. Each Cope Scholar Award consists of $5,000, a certificate, and an unrestricted research grant of $40,000.

The Cope Award recipient, Larry E. Overman, will receive his award at the ACS national meeting in New Orleans, March 23–27, and will give his award address during a Division of Organic Chemistry symposium at the ACS national meeting in New York City, Sept. 7–11. The Cope Scholars will receive their awards and present lectures during the symposium in New York City.

	Overman PHOTO BY KERRY KLAYMAN

"I hated chemistry in high school," says Larry E. Overman. He has come a long way since that disastrous encounter. A Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Irvine, Overman today is recognized as "one of the truly outstanding synthetic organic chemists in the world," according to Peter B. Dervan, professor of chemistry at California Institute of Technology.

Gilbert Stork, Eugene Higgins Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at Columbia University, notes that Overman has published about 260 papers in major journals: "The remarkable fact is that essentially every one of these papers contains either novel methodology or the imaginative application of methodology, more often than not arising from Overman's own research, to highly original total syntheses."

Overman, 59, grew up in Hammond, Ind., an industrial town next to Gary. He worked in the local steel mills during summers to help pay for his education at Earlham College, a small liberal arts institution in Richmond, Ind. When he enrolled, Overman says, "I didn't have much of an idea of what I was going to pursue." But Gerald Bakker, an exceptional teacher who minimized rote memorization and emphasized creative thinking, turned him on to chemistry in his freshman year.

By 1965, he had a B.A. in chemistry. He earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1969, where his research adviser was Howard H. Whitlock Jr. From 1969 to 1971, Overman did postdoctoral work with Ronald Breslow at Columbia.

Overman's timing in entering the job market was awful. The early 1970s were distinguished by "a nadir of jobs in chemistry, both in industry and academia," he recalls. "One was glad to get any job back then."

Nevertheless, Overman was fortunate enough to find his niche in 1971 as an assistant professor at UC Irvine, which had been established just six years earlier. By 1979, he was full professor; he was appointed distinguished professor in 1994. Overman has remained at Irvine, and he takes pride in having helped to build its organic chemistry department into "one of the stronger programs in the country." His former students include Steven R. Angle, currently dean of the College of Natural & Agricultural Sciences at UC Riverside; John Montgomery, now an organic chemistry professor at Wayne State University; and David W. C. MacMillan, currently an associate chemistry professor at Caltech.

Over the years, Overman and his team have expanded the body of knowledge in their field. He says the group is "interested in the development of new reactions and synthesis strategies that allow complex molecules to be assembled efficiently with high stereo- and enantiocontrol." More particularly, Overman says the team is attracted to challenges where "I don't see that existing chemistry can solve the problem in an effective way. In our total syntheses, I would be disappointed if we haven't learned fundamental information about chemical reactivity or the scope and limitations of chemical methods, if we haven't learned something more general than just having made target x or y."

Indeed, he is "one of those scientists who are changing the way organic chemists build molecules," according to David A. Evans, Abbott & James Lawrence Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. Overman's research program, which has "encompassed both the synthesis of complex molecular targets and the development of highly innovative synthesis methodology, has elevated the capabilities of our discipline," Evans says.

Dervan says Overman has "made important contributions in reaction design, notably the invention of cationic cyclization reactions" such as the aza-Cope-Mannich reaction.

Evans adds that this cyclization cascade "is broadly recognized as a highly innovative contribution to the synthesis of alkaloid-based natural products. His crowning achievement in this area was his elegant synthesis of (+)-strychnine in 1993."

Dervan continues, "In the field of target-oriented synthesis, Overman's total synthesis of asperazine is elegant, and his use of the intramolecular Heck reaction to forge a highly congested quaternary carbon center was a brilliant strategy."

Overman is particularly proud of a recently published total synthesis of the dodecacyclic alkaloids psycholeine and quadrigemine C, which he says "introduces an uncommon strategic application of asymmetric catalysis." Current total synthesis targets in his lab include the complex polyaza alkaloids communesin A, leptosins D and A, and palau'amine.

Overman attributes some of his success to the fact that his training was in physical organic chemistry rather than in synthetic organic chemistry. "I came to synthesis with a slightly different angle than others who had been trained in synthesis, and this background allowed me to approach problems in a different and distinctive way."

He also credits Whitlock and Breslow with teaching him how to select problems that are truly significant. Of course, once such problems are identified, it may take years to plumb their depths. For instance, Overman says he spent nearly two decades investigating charge rearrangement chemistry, building up the fundamental knowledge that has allowed this chemistry to be used incisively in complex molecule construction. But he's concerned that such long-term methodical explorations are becoming less practical in the hurried world of modern science. "I hope that they will continue to be a part of academic science," he says. "It's essential for the health of the enterprise."

Although Overman says academic life "turned out much better than I had expected," he still has some regrets. "One looks back in a scientific career and sees missed opportunities," he says. His first independent paper concerned a novel way to introduce oxygen into cyclic molecules. "The broader implication of that discovery would have been its application to control stereochemistry in acyclic structures, which emerged in the 1970s as a major research theme in organic chemistry. But I was thinking only of cyclic structures, so I completely missed that."

Overman's honors include the ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, induction into the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Centenary Medal of the U.K.'s Royal Society of Chemistry, the Yamada Prize, and the S. T. Li Prize for Achievements in Science & Technology.

He has invested considerable time in the world of publishing. He is currently editor-in-chief of Organic Reactions. He is on the editorial advisory boards of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Organic Letters, and the Journal of the Chemical Society, Perkin Transactions 1. In addition, Overman consults for Allergan Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer Global Research & Development, Roche Bioscience, Cytokinetics, and Chiron.

With his many accomplishments, it would be natural to assume that he's a workaholic. In fact, Overman says, "one of the biggest challenges I've faced since college was balancing a demanding, exciting, challenging professional life with a personal life outside of chemistry. I decided early on that there would be at least one day a week that I would not do anything related to work." When he does take time off, he enjoys free-diving and spear fishing in Australia, Mexico, and off the southern California coast.

Overman and his wife, Joanne, a high school chemistry teacher in Huntington Beach, Calif., live in Corona del Mar, Calif. They have two children.--

Jean A. Chmielewski, James L. Leighton, William H. Pearson, and Viresh H. Rawal were selected for Scholar Awards. Senior Scholar Awards will go to Andrew S. Kende, Richard B. Silverman, Dietmar Seyferth, and James D. White; and Young Scholar Awards to Milan Mrksich and Peter H. Seeberger.

	Chmielewski

"My interest in science has always been at the interface between chemistry and biology," says Jean Chmielewski, a professor of chemistry at Purdue University. Her interest has led her to focus on research in two interrelated areas: the design of agents to target and disrupt the interfaces of multimeric proteins and the design of self-assembling peptides with novel architectures and functions.

Her accomplishments include the novel integration of molecular-based switches with self-assembling peptides. These designs have impacted areas as diverse as peptide self-replication and cell-specific drug delivery. For instance, Chmielewski has designed a unique auto- and cross-catalytic self-replicating peptide system based on self-assembling peptides. One or more of the peptide products can be selectively amplified by changing the environmental conditions, such as pH or salt concentration, within the reaction. Similar pH-based switches are being exploited with peptides to enhance liposomal cargo unloading within specific cells.

During the past few years, Chmielewski's group has synthesized a wide range of unique agents to modulate protein-protein interactions, including the dimerization of HIV protease and integrase, transcription factors, and restriction endonucleases. Inhibitors of this type may lead to potent classes of anti-AIDS or anticancer therapeutic agents, as well as an increased understanding of the intermolecular contacts at protein subunit interfaces.

"Although the nature of protein-protein interactions is becoming better understood, rational approaches to inhibiting these interactions are still in their infancy," Chmielewski says. "My work seeks to answer fundamental questions concerning the chemistry and biology of disrupting protein-protein interactions, and, as such, has used a range of dimeric proteins as templates to address these questions."

Colleagues note that Chmielewski is a "determined, driven scientist" and "a first-rate scholar and a rising star" in the emerging field of bioorganic chemistry.

"In all aspects of her research, Chmielewski's approach is characteristically creative, yet rigorous in its attention to detail. She has established a uniquely interdisciplinary program integrating the tools of organic synthesis, structural biology, molecular biology, and enzymology to address fundamentally important and intriguing problems in protein science," says Barbara Imperiali, chemistry professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Chmielewski, 41, earned a B.S. from St. Joseph's University in 1983, then began graduate study at Columbia University, where her research focused on transaminase enzyme mimetics. She received a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1988, and was a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at both Rockefeller University and the University of California, Berkeley. She joined the faculty of Purdue University in 1990 and became a full professor in 2000. Chmielewski attributes much of her initial interest in chemistry to a series of excellent teachers and mentors including Judith Feldmeier, Ronald Breslow, the late George L. Nelson, and the late E. T. Kaiser.

Chmielewski has authored or coauthored more than 60 papers and has given more than 100 invited lectures. Among other honors, she has received the National Science Foundation's National Young Investigator Award (1994– 99), the First Award from the National Institutes of Health (1992–97), and the Iota Sigma Pi Agnes Fay Morgan Research Award (2001); Chmielewski is a University Faculty Scholar at Purdue University.--MELISSA BRADDOCK

	Kende PARK AVENUE PHOTO

Andrew S. Kende took to creating new chemical compounds at the age of seven, long before he became a renowned organic chemist. Inspired by a brief explanation of chemical bonding by his mother, the youngster scribbled formulas of his "creations"--which often included such improbable concoctions as NaK--in a small notebook.

He's still at it 63 years later. Kende is being honored for a career in academia and industry that spans more than 40 years and includes a long string of achievements in organic chemistry. Kende, 70, is the Charles F. Houghton Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Rochester.

Kende's work has encompassed many aspects of organic chemistry. His early mechanistic research, for example, focused on unsaturated cyclopropane rearrangements, while his bioorganic work includes (in collaboration with pharmacologist Alan Poland, now at the National Institutes of Health) the full characterization of the aryl hydrocarbon hydroxylase receptor, which binds 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin.

The majority of his work, though, has dealt with organic synthesis. Among his noteworthy accomplishments in this area are total syntheses of a number of significant anthracyclinones, including daunomycinone and the rhodomycin aglycones, in the early 1970s; the first total synthesis of a full taxane framework in 1986; and complete syntheses of the alkaloids (6)-dendrobine, isostemofoline, and stemonamide. He was also the first to synthesize a number of other compounds with antibiotic and antifungal properties, developing substantial new synthesis methodology in the process.

It's the adventure of science that keeps him going strong during his fifth decade of academic research. "The most fun in science is to discover, like an early explorer, a hitherto unknown substance or reaction or to comprehend for the first time how something works," he says. "Perhaps this is why I really enjoy finding a new and bizarre rearrangement reaction--something entirely unexpected along the way."

Kende tries to impart many of the experiences and lessons he has learned during his long career to his graduate students and postdocs. He also likes to take advantage of his extensive list of colleagues in another way: As avid travelers, he and his wife enjoy trips to visit former coworkers in places such as Switzerland, France, and Japan.

Kende received an A.B. in 1951 from the University of Chicago as well as an M.A. in 1954 and a Ph.D. in 1956, both from Harvard University. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Glasgow, in Scotland, he worked at Lederle Laboratories as a senior research scientist until 1968, when he joined the faculty of Rochester.

In addition to serving as a consultant to a number of chemical and pharmaceutical companies, as well as to the Air Force, Kende was editor-in-chief of Organic Reactions from 1983 to 1988, president of Organic Syntheses from 1992 to 2002, and an associate editor for the Journal of Organic Chemistry from 1997 to 2002. He is also a coorganizer of the French-American Chemical Society. Kende received the ACS Rochester Section Award in 1986.--AALOK MEHTA

It was a graduate class in synthetic organic chemistry that set the career direction of James L. Leighton, 37, now an associate professor of chemistry at Columbia University. While still an undergraduate at Yale University, Leighton signed up for the course taught by Samuel J. Danishevsky. Though Leighton knew going into the course that he liked chemistry, going out, he knew that synthetic organic chemistry would be his daily work.

	Leighton
	PHOTO BY ANNA HALL

"People have often used the word 'art' when talking about organic synthesis," Leighton says, trying to describe what it is about organic synthesis that intrigues him. "Unlike many other aspects of science, organic synthesis is a problem with no one unique solution--much as there is no one way to paint the Madonna." Since that Yale course, Leighton has shown a remarkable proficiency for devising insightful and efficient syntheses.

"He has a cunning ability to come up with solutions to difficult synthetic problems that are not only creative but practical," says Amir H. Hoveyda, the Joseph T. & Patricia Vanderslice Millennium Professor at Boston College. "Jim has shown that he has a knack for both. And that makes him special." Hoveyda first knew Leighton at Harvard, where Leighton was a graduate student in the laboratory of David A. Evans. For his Ph.D. work, Leighton played a primary role in completing the total syntheses of calyculin A and zaragozic acid C.

In 1994, Leighton was awarded a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, and he continued on at Harvard in Eric N. Jacobsen's laboratory. While there, he helped discover a catalytic enantioselective reaction: Cr-catalyzed aziridination of epoxides. Jacobsen was struck by Leighton's ability to "rejuvenate a long-struggling project," Hoveyda says.

Leighton joined the chemistry faculty at Columbia in 1996. One of the major research directions of his laboratory has been natural product synthesis. "The appeal of natural products is that there is no chemist-induced bias in the target," Leighton says. He seeks molecules that are both biologically active and "structurally interesting," knowing that the synthesis of something no chemist designed will help force him to think along new synthetic pathways. "You are presented with these--in some cases--startlingly complex targets that you must design creative solutions for," says Leighton.

His natural product synthesis dovetails nicely with another major research interest of his laboratory: new reaction design. For example, Leighton's work on olefin carbonylation reactions has provided new stereoselective synthetic methods, including rhodium-catalyzed silylformylation and the discovery of tandem silylformylation-allylsilylation.

His laboratory's syntheses of macrolide antibiotics, including leucascandrolide A and mycoticin A, have introduced efficient, high-yield approaches to natural product synthesis. "I think his synthesis of leucascandrolide is a masterful representation of how catalytic hydroformylation and carbonylation can be used in the synthesis of biologically important molecules," Hoveyda says.

Since 1999, Leighton has been awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Glaxo Wellcome Chemistry Scholar Award, an AstraZeneca Excellence in Chemistry Award, and an Eli Lilly Grantee Award, among other awards. In 2000, he also received a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.

Leighton loves to teach and hopes to help his students come to that same "moment of epiphany" that he had--"a time when a lightbulb sort of clicked on, and I realized I didn't have to memorize and could solve a problem without ever seeing it before."-LOUISA DALTON

Not really knowing what he was getting into, Milan Mrksich went to college to become a chemical engineer. But before too long, he was hooked on organic chemistry. It has only been a handful of years since Mrksich realized that organic chemistry is his calling, but in that short time, the University of Chicago associate professor of chemistry has already made a mark on science.

	Mrksich
	PHOTO BY JASON SMITH

Mrksich explains that the turning point for him came while studying organic chemistry as an undergraduate student with Steven C. Zimmerman, a chemistry professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. "I realized then that I really enjoyed organic chemistry," Mrksich says. So he switched his major to chemistry and began doing undergraduate research in Zimmerman's lab. "The lab experience showed me that chemistry research can be very exciting."

Since his undergraduate days, Mrksich's tastes have broadened to include biological and physical aspects of chemistry, but in the beginning it was organic chemistry that he found especially alluring. "Organic chemistry seemed like a very sophisticated version of Tinkertoys," Mrksich says. "I was excited about controlling reactions to build structures that couldn't be held or seen directly."

Building and tinkering with molecular-scale structures still fascinates Mrksich, and his research program shows it. One of the areas he focuses on nowadays is using chemical means to prepare tailored substrates to study cell biology. Mrksich and coworkers make use of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) to prepare surfaces composed of peptide and carbohydrate ligands that serve as model substrates for mechanistic studies of cell adhesion and migration.

To probe the effects of various functional groups on cellular activity, Mrksich's group has developed methods for controlling the composition of surfaces. For example, they have advanced synthetic techniques for functionalizing alkanethiols and have used Diels-Alder chemistry to immobilize ligands. The group has also devised procedures for preparing dynamic surfaces--surfaces whose properties can be switched on and off and can release ligands selectively. In other work, the group has combined SAMs and electrochemical methods to study fundamental processes at the solid-liquid interface.

"Milan is well on his way to becoming a top star," says University of Chicago chemistry professor Philip E. Eaton of his young colleague. "Milan has made and will continue to make significant contributions to organic chemistry."

Mrksich, 34, graduated from Illinois in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry and completed a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1994, working with chemistry professor Peter B. Dervan at California Institute of Technology. He then moved to Harvard University, where he conducted postdoctoral research with George M. Whitesides.

In 1996, Mrksich accepted an assistant chemistry professorship at the University of Chicago, and in the following year, he joined the university's Institute for Biophysical Dynamics. He was named associate professor of chemistry in 2000.

Despite his youth, Mrksich has already received several honors and awards. For example, he won fellowships from the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation and the American Cancer Society, and he was honored with a Searle Scholar Award and a New Faculty Award from the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation. Mrksich serves on the scientific advisory boards of three high-tech companies and on the editorial board of Langmuir.-MITCH JACOBY

	Pearson

The development of new synthetic methods for the assembly of nitrogen-containing compounds of biological interest has been a primary focus of chemistry professor William H. Pearson's research program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Pearson is being honored for his groundbreaking achievements in this area.

Pearson "has had a broad impact on heterocyclic chemistry, alkaloid synthesis, and the study of highly reactive nitrogen-containing functional groups," notes chemistry professor Edwin Vedejs, also at Ann Arbor. "He has established a truly exceptional record of achievement in scholarly research, service to chemistry, and the education of graduate students and industrial chemists in the area of heterocycles."

Pearson is best known for innovative [p4s+p2s] cycloadditions of 2-azaallyl anions with alkenes to synthesize pyrrolidines and for advances in azomethine ylide chemistry.

The 2-azaallyl anion method developed by his group has proven useful for the assembly of a variety of complex alkaloids, including (6)-crinine, (2)-amabiline, (2)-augustamine, (+)-coccinine, lepadiformine isomers, and the team's crowning achievement, lapidilectine B. The researchers also developed (2-azaallyl)stannanes as precursors of azomethine ylides, which may then be used in cycloaddition reactions.

They developed methods for using azides to construct polycyclic nitrogen-containing compounds. In early work, they devised a one-pot nitrene-diene cycloaddition to simultaneously form both rings of fused-bicyclic 3-pyrrolines, which are common components in pyrrolizidine and indolizidine alkaloids.

They also used intramolecular dipolar cycloadditions of azides with electrophile-bearing alkenes to construct bicyclic iminium ions. These bicyclizations were used in total syntheses of alkaloids such as (2)-swainsonine, g-lycorane, tylophorine, and crinane.

The researchers have used azides as masked primary amines in reductive double cyclizations for the synthesis of indolizidines, quinolizidines, and pyrrolizidines. They used this efficient, one-pot strategy in syntheses of several biologically important alkaloids, including the first enantiocontrolled synthesis of (2)-slaframine, the synthesis of (2)-swainsonine, and the total synthesis of (+)-australine.

Their discovery of the Schmidt reaction of aliphatic azides with carbocations led to syntheses of several heterocycles, including novel dopaminergic agents and the alkaloid gephyrotoxin. And they've been active in the search for potent and selective inhibitors of Golgi a-mannosidase II, which plays an important role in antigen expression on cancer cell surfaces. Using azide chemistry, they prepared a variety of nonnatural analogs of swainsonine as candidate inhibitors.

Pearson, 46, earned a B.S. in chemistry at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1978 and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1982 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He was a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at Yale University from 1982 to 1984, joined the University of Michigan in 1984, and has been a professor there since 1996. He has recently become vice president of R&D at Berry & Associates, Dexter, Mich.

Pearson received the 2001 Katritzky Award in Heterocyclic Chemistry from the International Society of Heterocyclic Chemistry. In the 1980s, he was a Lilly grantee and earned a Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation Award for Newly Appointed Faculty in Chemistry. He was honored in 1999 with a Faculty Achievement Award and an Excellence in Education Award.-STU BORMAN

	Rawal

The work of Viresh H. Rawal, professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago, exemplifies the state of the art of modern organic synthesis. His research interests include free-radical cascades, photochemistry, cycloaddition reactions, transition-metal-catalyzed processes, asymmetric catalysis, and complex target synthesis.

"Having had the privilege to work with [Rawal] as a Ph.D. student, I have experienced firsthand his amazing passion for science and encyclopedic knowledge of organic synthesis," says Sergey A. Kozmin, a former Ph.D. student of Rawal's and now assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago.

Highlights of Rawal's career include his original strategy for the synthesis of triquinanes--the fragmentation of a caged polycyclic precursor designed to provide rapid access to these structurally intricate metabolites. Amenable to the construction of linear, angular, and propellane frameworks, this approach proved to be a powerful and general entry into this family of natural products. His five-step stereocontrolled synthesis of oxosilphiperfolene was the culmination of this work, setting a new record in the field.

Rawal's synthesis of strychnine set another record. This formidable heptacyclic alkaloid was assembled in 12 steps featuring many elegant steps including intramolecular [4+2] cycloaddition and Heck cyclization. Recently, he presented a conceptually novel solution to the Aspidosperma family of natural products, as illustrated by the total synthesis of tabersonine. A new class of highly reactive amino-siloxy dienes with broad synthetic applicability was developed as a result of this endeavor. The catalytic, highly enantioselective cycloadditions of these and related dienes are particularly powerful synthetic entries into a range of carbocyclic and heterocyclic targets and represent a new direction in his research program.

"Rawal made many seminal and highly influential contributions, particularly in the areas of complex alkaloid synthesis and asymmetric catalysis. His work has expanded the arsenal of modern synthetic methods and demonstrated the power of creativity in organic synthesis," Kozmin says.

Born in Rajkot, India, Rawal, 44, immigrated with his family to the U.S. in 1968. He received a bachelor of science degree in chemistry in 1980 from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and a Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry in 1986 from the University of Pennsylvania under the guidance of Michael P. Cava.

Rawal carried out postdoctoral work in the laboratories of Gilbert Stork at Columbia University from 1986 to 1988, before beginning his independent career as an assistant professor of chemistry at Ohio State University in 1988. He was promoted to associate professor in 1994 and moved to the University of Chicago in 1995.

The recipient of numerous awards, Rawal's honors include a DuPont Young Faculty Award (1988–89), an American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Research Award (1990– 93), an Eli Lilly grant (1991–95), an American Cyanamid Faculty Award (1994), a Merck Young Investigator Award (1995), and a Pfizer Research Award for Synthetic Organic Chemistry (1995–98). He is the author or coauthor of more than 60 publications.-WILLIAM SCHULZ

	Seeberger

I cannot remember the last time I met a synthetic chemist who brings such excitement to his discipline," says one colleague when describing Peter H. Seeberger, Firmenich Associate Professor of Chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Evidence of Seeberger's excitement--and his talent--can be seen in the long list of awards he has earned. Among them are the Mizutani Foundation for Glycoscience Award in 1999, the Technology Review Top 100 Young Innovator Award in 1999, the GlaxoSmithKline Research Scholar and Alfred P. Sloan Research Scholar Awards in 2002, and the Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award in 2002.

Seeberger, 36, earned a B.S. in chemistry in 1989 from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, in Germany, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1995 from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Following a postdoctoral fellowship with Samuel J. Danishefsky at Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, he started at MIT as an assistant professor of chemistry in 1998. In 2002, he was promoted to associate professor.

To date, Seeberger has advised 18 graduate students and 15 postdoctoral fellows. He is associate editor of Chemistry & Biology, an editorial advisory board member of four other journals, and the editor of "Solid Support Oligosaccharide Synthesis and Combinatorial Carbohydrate Libraries" (New York: Wiley-VCH, 2001).

In the area of oligosaccharide synthesis, Seeberger introduced a new linker for solid-phase synthesis based on a cross-metathesis cleavage strategy and came up with several useful new hydroxyl protective groups. The combination of these methodological advances resulted in the creation of the first automated solid-phase oligosaccharide synthesizer, his most important contribution so far.

According to a colleague, "The magnitude of this accomplishment cannot be overstated. For the first time, biologists will perceive oligosaccharides not as unattainable and mysterious substances, but as biopolymers that can be obtained in chemically defined form by nonexperts and subjected to biological investigation." Seeberger commercialized the technology and licensed it to Ancora Pharmaceuticals, a company started by his first graduate student, Obadiah J. Plante.

Seeberger also applied this chemistry to the preparation of several promising synthetic carbohydrate vaccines, including a synthetic malaria vaccine that showed very good efficacy in mice in tests carried out by Louis Schofield's lab at Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia. This vaccine is currently being advanced toward clinical trials.

In another area, Seeberger developed an efficient and novel synthesis of heparin sulfates. These heterogeneous glycosaminoglycans are significant because they participate in cell-cell interactions and growth factor signaling in the extracellular matrix in normal and pathological processes, as well as having value as pharmaceutical reagents. However, the molecular basis of their activities is rarely understood because there is a lack of available heparin fragments of defined chemical structure.

One colleague predicts, "Seeberger's ability to chemically synthesize fragments of defined structure in large quantity is going to revolutionize this field."-DEANNA MILLER

A giant in the field of organometallics, Dietmar Seyferth, 74, not only has produced a body of distinguished research, but he also has served his colleagues as an editor of the two leading organometallic journals.

	Seyferth

For more than 40 years, Seyferth, the former Robert T. Haslam & Bradley Dewey Professor, now emeritus professor in the department of chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has concentrated his research in the general area of organometallic chemistry, approaching it from both the organic and inorganic sides. His investigations led to the publication of more than 500 research papers and the introduction of a number of workhorse reagents.

Those reagents, says a colleague, "are important tools in the armamentarium of modern synthetic organic chemistry." In addition, Seyferth's work has inspired others to focus their attention on reagents based on organotin, mercury, silicon, and other main-group elements.

In 1962, his work led to the development of what is widely known as "Seyferth reagents" when he demonstrated that the thermal decom- position of phenyl(trihalomethyl)mercury compounds produce dihalocarbenes. Over the next 10 years, he and his coworkers employed these reagents in routes to a variety of classes of organic and organometallic compounds. The reagents are especially important for the synthesis of cyclopropanes.

During the 1980s, Seyferth and coworkers demonstrated that acyllithium reagents could be generated via carbonylation of alkyllithiums at low temperature in situ in the presence of electrophiles with which they then reacted. He developed efficient syntheses of acylsilanes, a-hydroxy ketones, 1,2-diketones, and a number of other classes of organic compounds based on this chemistry.

From 1963 to 1981, Seyferth was founding regional editor (for North and South America as well as for Asia) of the Journal of Organometallic Chemistry. In 1982, he became the founding editor of ACS's Organometallics, which quickly became the leading journal in the field.

Seyferth received a B.A. degree in chemistry from the University of Buffalo in 1951, and master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University in 1953 and 1955, respectively.

In 1954, Seyferth was named a Fulbright Scholar and spent a year of study at the Technische Hochschule in Munich, Germany, with E. O. Fischer. In 1955, he went to work for Dow Corning in Midland, Mich., for six months, but then returned to Harvard for postdoctoral research. He became an instructor in the MIT chemistry department in 1957 and was named to his current position in 2002.

Seyferth's awards include an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship in 1962 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1968. He received ACS's Frederic Stanley Kipping Award in Organosilicon Chemistry in 1972, the ACS Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry in 1981, and the ACS Award in Organometallic Chemistry in 1996.

He was elected a member of the German Academy of the Natural Scientists, Leopoldina, in 1977, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1978, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1995. In 2001, the National Academy of Sciences recognized Seyferth's lifetime of research accomplishment and elected him a member.-MARC REISCH

Medicinal agents--specifically the synthesis, design, and molecular mechanisms of action of enzymes--have been the research focus of Richard B. Silverman for much of his scientific career.

	Silverman

An organic chemist by training, Silverman, professor of chemistry at Northwestern University, and his group couple synthetic and physical organic chemistry to the study of enzyme mechanisms and the inhibition of enzymes.

Many drugs are known to function as specific irreversible inhibitors of particular enzymes, but little is known about how these inactivators work at the molecular level.

Silverman, 56, has focused on a variety of enzymes that are important targets for the design of new therapeutic agents and has used mechanistic information revealed through experimentation to design new mechanism-based inhibitors for several enzymes. Primarily, his research has been on enzymes that are targets for the treatment of Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, stroke, and thrombosis.

His most creative work, colleagues say, has been on monoamine oxidase, where Silverman has shown that free radicals are highly relevant intermediates in this enzyme-catalyzed reaction.

Along with inactivators of monoamine oxidase, Silverman has found inactivation mechanisms for known and new inactivators of g-aminobutyric acid aminotransferase and nitric oxide synthase.

Silverman's interest in chemistry began at age eight, he says, when his older brother used his chemistry set to conduct the "invisible flame" experiment.

The flame was indeed invisible, Silverman explains, until the bedroom curtains caught fire.

"It was all very intriguing until Mom forbade chemistry sets from the household," Silverman notes.

Years later as a teenager, Silverman was allowed to get a chemistry set. But for all those years, chemistry had been brewing in his head.

"Gee, this must be really something cool, if Mom won't let me have it," he recalls thinking. "I had a lot of fun dabbling with the set. I think I was the only person in high school chemistry class who actually listened to the teacher."

In graduate school, Silverman wanted to do natural product synthesis but slowly moved to the synthesis and study of models for the molecular mechanism of enzymes. Then, as a postdoc, he learned more about how to work with enzymes.

Silverman is the author of three textbooks related to medicinal and enzyme chemistry, all of which take an organic chemistry approach. He is also the author of nearly 200 articles and holds 21 patents.

A graduate of Pennsylvania State University (receiving a B.S. there in 1968) and Harvard University (earning a Ph.D. in 1974), Silverman began teaching at Northwestern in 1976, after a postdoctoral stint at Brandeis University with the late Robert Abeles.

Northwestern students praise Silverman as a charismatic lecturer able to present difficult and potentially dry material in a lucid and compelling fashion, colleagues say. His teaching has also been recognized by membership on the Northwestern faculty honor roll and by several university awards for teaching excellence.

One of his texts--"The Organic Chemistry of Drug Design and Drug Action"--is in its 10th printing. Silverman is currently finishing work on a second edition of that book.

With the Cope award comes a research grant that Silverman plans to use to investigate the mechanism of a natural product that may identify a new target for the treatment of several neurodegenerative diseases.-JEFF JOHNSON

	White PHOTO BY JOY MASSEY, BALL STUDIO

Oregon State University Distinguished Professor James D. White is internationally known for his work in organic synthesis and structural elucidation of complex natural products with a multiplicity of stereochemical features. Among these are terpenes, alkaloids, macrolides, marine metabolites, and anthracyclines.

"From his work have come 200 publications, including 45 syntheses of natural products, many of which were first syntheses and some of which represented exceptionally challenging targets," according to colleague T. Darrah Thomas, emeritus chemistry professor at Oregon State.

Many of these synthesized compounds are of medicinal, organoleptic, or structural interest. Thomas adds that White's "work has been presented in beautifully written, full papers that reveal the intellectual depth of the master while providing models of elegance and lucidity."

White's noteworthy work in the area of terpene research is the determination of the absolute configuration and the enantiospecific synthesis of C₃₄-botrycoccene, which was the first synthesis of this molecule. More recently, he has achieved the total synthesis of (6)-euonyminol. This polyhydroxylated sesquiterpene, with its 11 contiguous stereogenic carbons, has so far been created only in White's laboratory.

A significant part of White's work has been directed toward macrolides. After initial successes with vermiculine, methynolide, and geodiamolide, the synthesis of boromycin represents a pinnacle in achieving control of stereochemistry and efficient assembly of highly functionalized substructures. The approach used by White for the synthesis of boromycin remains the only complete de novo synthesis of this compound.

Further work on macrolides has included the total synthesis of avermectin B1a, rutamycin B, and rhizoxin D. According to Thomas, "The synthesis of avermectin brings together three building blocks in an elegantly convergent route." White's morphine synthesis work recently found a successful asymmetric pathway to this important alkaloid. Only the second of this kind of synthesis, the route employed a unique carbenoid CH insertion to construct the central core of the morphine structure from a phenanthrenoid platform.

White, 67, received a B.A. from Cambridge University in 1959. He earned a master's degree in 1961 from the University of British Columbia, and he did his Ph.D. work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, finishing in 1965 and going on to teach at Harvard University. White was an associate professor at Harvard when he left in 1971 to teach at Oregon State. He has trained almost 60 graduate students and more than 80 postdoctoral researchers. In 1992, White earned the rank of Oregon State Distinguished Professor.

In recognition of his research, White has received many awards, the most recent being the Centenary Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1998 and the Wyeth-Ayerst Research Award from Columbia University in 2000. In 1995, he received a doctorate (Sc.D.) from Cambridge University.

White served as an associate editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society between 1989 and 1994 and has been an associate editor of Chemical Communications since 1996. White served on the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Organic Chemistry from 1981 to 1986. He was also on the board of editors of Organic Syntheses from 1983 to 1991 and was that publication's editor-in-chief in 1989.

White has been active in the ACS Organic Division, serving on the executive committee from 1982 to 1985 and as a councilor from 1990 to 1992.-NICK WAFLE

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