All together, over the years I have been lucky enough to have had some fifteen Spanish coworkers and of these I would like to mention particularly the names of Rosa Claramunt-Elguero and José Elguero. Collaboration with them, and with their compatriots, has enriched enormously the work carried out in my laboratory both from a scientific and from a personal stand point.
My professional life has been devoted to two great causes: inter- and intra-national cooperation and to Heterocyclic Chemistry. As you will see, the one has helped the other. 1 would first like to attempt to explain why Heterocyclic Chemistry is important. Life itself is heterocyclic.
All the vital processes of every living organism depend on a host of functional heterocyclic molecules as exemplified by the pyrimidine and purine bases of the nucleic acids, several of the essential amino acids, many vitamins and coenzymes, the phorphyrins and the sugars. Vast numbers of pharmacologically active heterocycles are in regular clinical use, most of which have been synthesized just for that purpose. Other heterocycles kill our pests and weeds, preserve or sensitize as required and literally color every aspect of our existance.
Heterocyclic molecules possess a cyclic structure in which the ring contains carbon together with at least one other element which is most frequently nitrogen, oxygen or sulphur. An enormous number of heterocycles is known and this number is increasing exponentially. Thirty years ago, when I started my independent work, the subject of heterocylic chemistry seemed a jumble of experimental observations with very relatively little qualitative and almost no quantitative explanations and with few generalizations. I have tried to take the wider view, to pull the threads together, to trace the relationships, and to systematize the subject.
It has been my privilege in these endeavours to have been able to gather around me a body of collaborators of truly international scope, over 400 from more than 40 countries. It is my belief that these interactions have resulted not only in good chemistry but have also made some contribution towards international understanding. American and Russian, Greek and Turk, Indian and Pakistani, Chinese and Japanese, all have worked together in the greatest harmony.
Another aspect, that of intra-national cooperation, has been between the academic and the industrial spheres. We in academia have two major duties: the first is to teach and thus to pass on to the younger generation the torch of knowledge and, still more importantly, the attitude and the motivation to aspire to a deeper understanding. The second is to carry out fundamental researches that will increase our understanding of this world.
Our colleagues in industry, by contrast, are charged to discover, improve, and to make more efficient, safer and cleaner, the processes which give us the capital and consumer goods we need for modern civi1ization. However, there is no rigid boundary between pure and applied research: it has been a recurring theme in my endeavours to bridge again and again that gap. Education is a continuous process. We academics must remember that, for ourselves and also for the graduates that we produce. The whole concept of this University to enable study across the etherwaves is in line with this continuous endeavour. It is, I believe, a mark of the true academic spirit to continue to strive, imperfect that we are, towards a better understanding and simultaneously to try and enable as many of our fellow human beings to take advantage of the greater richness of experience which comes with education.
It is a profound pleasure to be connected with the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, which I believe is doing so much in this direction for the people of Spain.
Madrid, Paraninfo de San Bernardo, 28 January 1986
