"Chemistry touches everyone's daily life, whether as a source of important drugs, polymers, detergents, or insecticides. Since the field of organic chemistry is intimately involved with the synthesis of these compounds, there is a strong incentive to invest large resources in synthesis. Our ability to predict the usefulness of new organic compounds before they are prepared is still rudimentary. Hence, both in academia and at many chemical companies, research directed toward the discovery of new types of organic compounds continues at an unabated pace. Also, natural products, with their enormous diversity in molecular structure and their possible medicinal use, have been and still are the object of intensive investigations by synthetic organic chemists."