Verley type transition state 8 (Scheme 3). The use of acetone cyanohydrin as a cyanide source takes advantage of both the reversibility of cyanohydrin synthesis and the steric influence on the position of the equilibrium, which is generally more favorable for addition to aldehydes than to ketones.Acyl cyanides, 9 cyanoformates, 10 and cyanophosphonates 11 can also be used as cyanating agents and have the major advantage of producing O-protected cyanohydrins which do not revert to carbonyl compounds; thus, the cyanohydrin formation becomes irreversible, and even substrates for which the equilibrium between carbonyl compound and cyanohydrin is unfavorable can be prepared Michael North was born in Blackburn, England, in 1964. He obtained his B.Sc. in 1985 from the University of Durham and his D.Phil. in 1988 from the University of Oxford for work on the synthesis of nonracemic amino acids carried out in the group of Professor Sir J. E. Baldwin. After a two-year postdoctoral position in Professor G. Pattenden's research group at the University of Nottingham, he was appointed to his first academic post at the University of Wales at Bangor. In 1999 he moved to King's College London and was promoted to Professor of synthetic organic chemistry in 2001. In 2004, he moved to his current position as Professor of organic chemistry and joint director of the University Research Centre in Catalysis and Intensified Processing at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Professor North has published over 100 original papers and also holds five patents. His research interests are centered on the design and mechanistic study of new catalysts with applications including asymmetric carbon-carbon bond formation, carbon dioxide chemistry, and polymer chemistry. In 2001 he was awarded the Descartes Prize by the European Commission for his work on asymmetric cyanohydrin synthesis using metal(salen) complexes.