Chemistry

Edited by: Neeraja Sankaran
K.C. Nicolaou, Z. Yang, J.J. Liu, H. Ueno, P.G. Nantermet, R.K. Guy, C.F. Claiborne, J. Renaud, E.A. Couladouros, K. Paulvannan, E.J. Sorensen, "Total synthesis of taxol," Nature, 367:630-4, 1994. (Cited in 67 publications through April 1995)

Comments by K.C. Nicolaou, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, Calif.

This paper was the most cited paper in chemistry in 1994-- ranking 12th overall in citations to scientific papers last year--according to the Science Citation Index of the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information.

Enumerating various reasons for the article's success, K.C. Nicolaou, professor and chairman of the department of chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and a professor of chemistry at the University of California, San Diego, declares that it "was the first to report the total [chemical] synthesis of taxol, [which] was by 1994 a household name as a new anti-cancer agent, and...