Natural Products Desk Reference

Written by a group of experts affiliated with the prestigious Dictionary of Natural Products, this book provides a concise overview of the key structural types of natural products and their interrelationship. A structurally diverse group, ranging from simple aliphatic carbon chains to high molecular weight proteins, natural products can usually be classified into one or more groups. The text describes these major types, including flavonoids, carbohydrates, terpenoids, polyketides, and lipids, and it illustrates them with accurate chemical structures, demonstrating the biosynthetic relationships between groups. The book also covers nomenclature, stereochemistry, and ring numbering.

John Buckingham is a former lecturer in organic chemistry at the University of London, London, United Kingdom. He has been involved with the Chapman & Hall/CRC chemical database since its inception in 1980, initially as a Chapman & Hall employee, more recently as editorial consultant. From the database, various editions of theDictionary of Organic Compounds and the Dictionary of Natural Products (both of which have been for some years solely electronic) have been produced. In addition, he compiled (with W. Klyne and later with R. A. Hill), two editions and supplements of the Atlas of Stereochemistry and has coauthored several other specialist dictionaries in the Chapman & Hall/CRC series.
He is also the author of the popular science books Chasing the Molecule and Bitter Nemesis: The Intimate History of Strychnine.

Caroline M. Cooper completed her BSc in chemistry at King’s College London in 1968, and then worked at Glaxo Research in Greenford. She contributes to theDictionary of Organic Compounds, and in 2011, she edited the second edition ofOrganic Chemist’s Desk Reference, both published by CRC Press.

Rupert Purchase studied chemistry at the South-East Essex Technical College [Grad. RIC Part II (External), 1967] and the University of York (DPhil, 1972). He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a visiting fellow at the University of Sussex (2014–2017). Dr. Purchase contributes to The Combined Chemical Dictionary on DVD published by CRC Press, and is a freelance editor forScience of Synthesis: Houben-Weyl Methods of Molecular Transformations published by Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart. He edited the Royal Society of Chemistry’s (RSC) Environmental Chemistry GroupBulletin from 1995 to 2013 and was awarded the RSC’s Long Service Award in 2011.