Andrew Holmes, University of Melbourne, Australia, will be the Nozoe Lecturer in Taipei, Taiwan, in 2013. The Nozoe Lecture forms part of the International Symposium on Novel Aromatic Compounds (ISNA) and is held as a memorial to the Japanese chemist Tetsuo Nozoe (1902–1996). Nozoe was an organic chemist who initiated the discipline of nonbenzenoid aromatic chemistry and was a great contributor to the modernization and internationalization of Japan’s organic chemistry in the post-war period. He served as the founding chairman of ISNA at age 68 and attended every meeting until his death. Nozoe was also a prolific travel writer and his travel diary is serialized in The Chemical Record summer 2012.

Andrew Holmes obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He gained his Ph.D. on heteroannulenes in 1971 with Franz Sondheimer at University College London, UK. He did post-doctoral research in the group of Professor Albert Eschenmoser at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Holmes was appointed to an assistant lectureship at Cambridge University, UK, in 1972, and gained a full lectureship in 1977. He was promoted to a personal Readership in 1995 and to a personal Professorship in 1998. In 2004 he moved to become Professor of Organic and Polymer Chemistry at Imperial College, London, UK, and was also appointed Australian Research Council Federation Fellow at the Bio21 Institute, University of Melbourne, and at the Australian science agency, CSIRO Molecular and Health Technologies.

Holmes is also a member of the International Advisory Boards of Angewandte Chemie and The Chemical Record and has co-authored one of the most cited articles in Angewandte Chemie’s history. He gave prestigious TCR lecture this year.

Holmes’ research interests include natural and non-natural synthetic targets. In particular, biologically active piperidine and indolizidine alkaloids, marine cyclic ethers, medium ring unsaturated lactams, and the potential application of these materials to alkaloid synthesis and novel peptidomimetics. A recent interest has been the use of phosphoinositides to probe downstream intracellular signaling processes.

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• Solution Processable Monosubstituted Hexa-Peri-Hexabenzocoronene Self-Assembling Dyes,
  S. Ren, C. Yan, D. Vak, D. J. Jones, A. B. Holmes, W. W. H. Wong,
  Adv. Func. Mater. 2012.
  DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201102141
• A Gram-Scale Batch and Flow Total Synthesis of Perhydrohistrionicotoxin,
  M. Brasholz, J. M. Macdonald, S. Saubern, J. H. Ryan, A. B. Holmes,
  Chem. Eur. J. 2010, 16(37), 11471–11480.
  DOI: 10.1002/chem.201001435

From Angewandte Chemie’s Most Cited Ever articles:

• Electroluminescent Conjugated Polymers—Seeing Polymers in a New Light,
  A. Kraft, A. C. Grimsdale, A. B. Holmes,
  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 1998, 37(4), 402–428.
  DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1521-3773(19980302)37:4<402::AID-ANIE402>3.0.CO;2-9

Also of interest:

• Tetsuo Nozoe (1902−1996),
  T. Asao, S. Ito, I. Murata,
  Eur. J. Org. Chem. 2004, 4, 899–928.
  DOI: 10.1002/ejoc.200300579