Having grown up in Suffolk I moved to Oxford in 1983 for my undergraduate and doctoral degrees in Chemistry. Following two years of post doctoral work at Columbia University in New York, I returned to Oxford as Lecturer in Organic Chemistry and Tutorial Fellow at Brasenose in 1992, becoming Professor of Chemistry in 2016. Within the Chemistry Department I am Director of Graduate Studies for the Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology Sections, and I hold a joint appointment with the Oxford Suzhou Centre for Advanced Research to direct research in the application of enzymes for chemical synthesis.

I provide tutorial coverage for the entire Organic Chemistry component of the MChem course beginning with the fundamentals of nomenclature, structure, stereochemistry, and mechanism developing to advanced spectroscopic analysis and total synthesis of complex organic molecules.

Organic Chemistry is a vast and rapidly-growing subject, with new developments and applications being reported daily. Tutorials in this subject aim to build on the idea that most of the topics can be understood and in many cases predicted with a thorough knowledge of certain basic processes which are mostly introduced in the first year of the course. The ensuing ‘rules’ reflect how and why electrons tend to redistribute themselves within and between molecules leading to the creation and cleavage of bonds. The resulting reaction mechanisms explain in a very visual way the course of organic chemical reactions, and how this information can then be used in applications ranging from pharmaceuticals, flexible electronics

My research concerns the chemical synthesis of small organic molecules, in which we aim to create new ways of transforming one class of compounds into another. This work led to shorter and more efficient preparative routes to targeted molecules – usually structurally complex natural products – and provided new insights into the factors which control reactivity and selectivity.

We have highlighted how Nature’s protein catalysts – enzymes – may be used to achieve transformations not possible with chemical reagents. For example, we employed one such enzyme, an alcohol dehydrogenase, in a key step to produce a single mirror-image form of a nutraceutical, which led to the formation of a spin-out company which now markets this compound to endurance athletes. More recently, we have engineered variants of a bacterial cytochrome P450 to insert an oxygen atom into chemically inert C–H bonds; this process changes the physical and chemical properties of the molecule and produces high-value intermediates with application in the discovery of new pharmaceuticals.