Special Issue in Honor of Professor George Robert Pettit

Abstract

It is an honor and a pleasure for us to serve as Guest Editors of this issue of the Journal of Natural Products dedicated to Professor George Robert (Bob) Pettit. We wish to express our sincere thanks to Bob's former students, postdoctoral fellows, visiting scientists, and his many colleagues from the former Cancer Research Institute at Arizona State University and institutions worldwide, for submitting such a diverse set of excellent manuscripts for this issue. Their generosity in terms of time and effort is greatly appreciated and provides well-deserved recognition of the many outstanding contributions that Bob has made to the field of natural products science and anticancer drug discovery over the past five decades.Bob Pettit was born on June 8, 1929, in Long Branch, New Jersey. He gained his B.S. in chemistry at Washington State University in 1952 and proceeded to Wayne State University, where he completed his M.S. in heterocyclic chemistry in 1954 and his Ph.D. in steroid chemistry in 1956, both under the direction of Professor Carl Djerassi. Bob remembers the Djerassi group of the mid-1950s as an exciting and diverse group of talented young scientists from many parts of the world, including Australia, India, Israel, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, who proceeded to prominent positions in academia, government, and industry. These included Albert Bowers and John Zderic, who later became CEO and Vice President of Syntex, respectively. In 1956, Bob moved to Norwich Eaton Pharmaceuticals (now Proctor and Gamble) as Senior Research Chemist, and in 1957 he transferred 