I studied chemistry at Oxford University, where I was at New College.\u00a0 (Before you ask, I didn\u2019t sing in New College choir, as I was not of that standard.\u00a0 I moonlighted at Oriel, and occasionally at Queen\u2019s and Balliol.\u00a0 But that belongs on the Music page.)<\/p>\n
My Part II (4th year undergraduate research) project was supervised by Dr Gordon Whitham, a wonderful chemist of the old school.\u00a0 It was about free-radical-mediated rearrangements of allylic sulphones, sulphoxides, and thioethers.\u00a0 But where sulphoxides got involved, sigmatropic rearrangements took over.<\/p>\n
For my DPhil (that is Oxford-speak for PhD) I worked in the laboratories of Dr (now Professor) Stephen Davies.\u00a0 I concentrated on synthetic organic chemistry, in\u00a0particular finding synthetic applications of a\u00a0route to enantiomerically pure beta-amino esters that had been developed in the group a little earlier.\u00a0 Unimaginatively, my thesis was called \u201cAsymmetric synthesis via beta-amino esters\u201d.\u00a0 In my favourite part, I combined the existing methodology with a Meisenheimer rearrangement to make 1,5-dihydroxy compounds; and with a Cope elimination to make asymmetric Baylis-Hillman adducts.\u00a0 I also made daunosamine and an epimer of it, but that was not as elegant as I had hoped.\u00a0 But it was my first exposure to sugar chemistry, which remains an interest.\u00a0 My internal examiner was Dr George Fleet, a leading carbohydrate chemist.<\/p>\n
I did a two-year post-doc in Japan at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, in the laboratory of Professor Koichi Mikami.\u00a0 I am very grateful for his kindness \u2013 I was the first post-doc in his laboratory (and indeed in his department), and he made me very welcome.\u00a0 I was working with oxonium-ene reactions, in particular intramolecular variants.\u00a0 I had a very enthusiastic student, now Dr Hirofumi Ohmura, who is now a researcher at Astellas.\u00a0 I was funded at that time by a fellowship from the Royal Society and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.<\/p>\n
I now practise primarily in the field of chemical patents, but in a very wide range of chemistry.<\/p>\n
I am a member of:<\/p>\n
The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC<\/a>)<\/p>\n The Society of Chemical Industry (SCI<\/a>)<\/p>\n