I graduated from U of R in the spring of 1971 with a BS in Chemistry.  I was accepted at Brandeis for graduate school in chemistry which I would start in the fall.  Since I knew this was probably the last free summer I would have I decided to use it to travel through Europe.  This turned out to be quite an adventure.  I bought a BMW 2002 and picked it up at the factory in Munich.  The  intention was to use it to travel through Europe and ship it back to the US.  Well, 10 days after I had picked it up it was stolen when I parked it outside a youth hostel in Sarajevo.  It was tough to communicate with the police since they did not speak English, French or German.  Finally they found a secretary that spoke French and I realized that I couldn't remember the word for steal in French.  Eventually I got the message across and left the name and address of my grandmother, who lived in Switzerland, with them in case they recovered the car.   To make a long story short, the Yugoslavian police did recover the car and I found out when I was in Amsterdam.

       I finished my PhD (with Prof. Jim Hendrickson) in June 1975 but had to kill some time until the start of my post doctoral appointment at the ETH in Zurich Switzerland with Prof. Albert  Eschenmoser in January of 1976.  I worked for another professor  (Ron Parry) at Brandeis for 6 months.

       In Switzerland I met, Wivi (pronounce Vivi) who I would later marry.  Wivi is Danish but was working in Switzerland at the time.  Her son, Thomas, was at a boarding school there. 

       Since it was difficult to find an academic position from overseas  (I had a few offers, but none that I wanted to take) I got another post-doctoral appointment at Harvard (with the late Prof. RB Woodward) which started in September 1977.  Wivi and Thomas came with me to the states and we were married in May 1978.

       This time I had more luck with my job search.  I accepted a position as assistant professor at Duke University. We moved from Cambridge, MA to Chapel Hill, NC in August 1979.  I wasn't quite sure what it would be like to move south but we found it to our liking.

       Thomas was in Junior high at the time we moved.  His native language is Danish so he had the extra task of learning English.  He made friends easily and excelled at soccer.  He still holds some soccer records at Chapel Hill High (most goals in year and most goals in career). 

       In February of 1985 Wivi and I had our first child, Laura.  She was born with cerebral palsy although at first we did not know the extent of her handicap.  She had a smaller than normal head but we hoped that she would overcome some of the developmental delays that she was experiencing.  When she was about 6 months old the doctor explained to us that she would be severely handicapped.  Although she could move her arms and legs she could not control them and never would walk or talk.  She does smile and laugh and cry to communicate her feelings.  Laura, now 14, is living in a group home in Chapel Hill where she can get the round-the-clock care that she needs.

       I left Duke June of 1986 to take a position at Glaxo's newly established research center at the Research Triangle Park, NC.  At  this time Glaxo was a small to medium sized British based  pharmaceutical company.  They had a top selling drug that propelled them from 27th in the world to number 1 in about 3 years.  They were  interested in globalizing the company which included establishing a  research facility in US.  I was the first research chemist that they hired in the US.  During my first year they rented a lab at Duke, next to the one with my graduate students, where I started some Glaxo projects with a few assistants.

       Our second daughter, Emily, was born in December of 1986.  Emily is now in middle school.  She enjoys soccer, tennis and talking on the phone.  After resisting for a long time we broke down and got  her a golden retriever in April 1999 which we all ended up liking.

       During 1986 I was also involved in a Glaxo-sponsored  renovation of old undergraduate labs at UNC at Chapel Hill as temporary lab space for Glaxo.  I moved to these labs when they were finished in the summer of 1987 and spent the next 4 years there until our permanent research facilities out in the Research Triangle Park were completed in 1991.  UNC rented the space to Glaxo for $1 a year, in return Glaxo renovated virtual unusable space into modern laboratories which they gave to the University when we left four years later.

       In 1995 Glaxo bought Burroughs Wellcome, a smaller British pharmaceutical company that also has a research arm in Research Triangle Park.  This purchase led to some layoffs and was generally an uncomfortable time for everyone.  It made everyone think twice about company loyalty.

       At Glaxo Wellcome I have been involved in many scientific projects.  One of them, an anticancer project led to a compound that is undergoing human trials.  Currently I am working on a diabetes  project involving nuclear receptors.

       I have also been heavily involved in recruiting chemists for the chemistry division which now has about160 chemists.  This involves going to several colleges and interviewing the prospective PhD chemists and post docs and inviting some of them for interview trips.

       Thomas married his high school sweetheart, Nancy Kelly and they had a daughter (Evi) and son (Thomas).  Unfortunately they are now divorced. 

       Wivi's parents and siblings are all living in Denmark on an Island called MØn.  We visit them every few years.  My parents are still living in Upper Montclair in the same house that I grew up in.  They like to visit us in North Carolina usually at Christmas and in the summer when we also go to the Outer Banks with them and my brother Michael and his family.
 
 

I look forward to reading everyone's write-ups since I have known you
all for so long.  I have even known some of you from before College High. 
Mike went to Northeast School since 4th grade and Bill was there since 
kindergarten.  Check out these pictures and see if you can recognize us.