Alan Katritzky was educated at Oxford and has held faculty positions at Cambridge and East Anglia before he migrated in 1980 to the University of Florida, where he was Kenan Professor and Director for the Institute for Heterocyclic Compounds. During his career he has trained more than 1000 graduate students and post-docs, and lectured and consulted world-wide. He led the team, which produced “Comprehensive Heterocyclic Chemistry” and its sequels, "CHEC-II" and "CHEC-III”, has edited “Advances in Heterocyclic Chemistry, Vols. 1 through 111” and conceived the plan for “Comprehensive Organic Functional Group Transformations”. He founded Arkat-USA, a non-profit organization which publishes “Archive for Organic Chemistry” (ARKIVOC) an electronic journal completely free to authors and readers at (www.arkat-usa.org). Honors include 14 honorary doctorates from 11 countries and membership of foreign membership of the National Academies of Britain, Catalonia, India, Poland, Russia and Slovenia.

• Tribute to Alan R. KatritzkyA. John Boulton and Eric Scriven1. DMAD as a Building Block in Heterocyclic SynthesisMajid M. Heravi and Tooba Alishiri2. Chemistry of Pent-4-yne-1,3-diones (acetylenic β-diketones) as Precursors for Heterocyclic CompoundsKamal F. M. Atta, Omaima O. M. Farahat, Tareq Q. Al-Shargabi, Mohamed G. Marei and El Sayed H. El Ashry3. Aromaticity and Conjugation in 1,2-Benzoquinone Valence Isomers and CongenersAlexandru T. Balaban, Alexander Greer and Joel F. Liebman4. Ketenes as Privileged Synthons in the Syntheses of Heterocyclic Compounds Part 1: Three- and Four-Membered HeterocyclesMajid M. Heravi and Bahareh Talaei5. Heterocycles from the Reaction of Thione Groups with Acetylenic BondsAshraf A. Aly, Alan B. Brown and Alaa A. Hassan

"The typesetting, arrangement of references, and drafting of structural formulas adhere to the high standards of this series and provide a model for good publishing...The content is, as to be expected, excellent." --Journal of the American Chemical Society