‘Adrien Albert (1907-1989) began his working life as a pharmacist in Sydney. However, the business aspects of pharmacy did not appeal to him and he quickly returned to the University of Sydney where he graduated with first-class honours in pharmaceutical science. He then undertook research with W. H. Linnell at the University of London and received his Ph.D. in 1937 for synthetic work on acridine antiseptics. He had a prodigious work ethic and spent the next 50 years battling administrators and forging a stellar career in medicinal chemistry within Australia, UK and around the globe. His primary interest lay in how and why medicinal substances exerted their effects. Albert sought unifying threads for this work as published in his substantial book Heterocyclic Chemistry. His ideas on Selective Toxicity were possibly his greatest contribution to medicinal chemistry and this culminated in a seventh edition of Selective Toxicity (1985) and a companion book, Xenobiosis (1987).’1
Throughout his career Albert made major advances to heterocyclic chemistry and its role in medicinal chemistry. He was from all reports an interesting man, who continually organised his and his staff’s time. He disliked administration and evidently its cessation was the only good aspect of retirement.
This talk will focus on our research on the design, synthesis, and exploitation of biological probes to study key biological processes and as a basis of new medicinal agents and functional biomaterials. The focus will be on the importance of heterocyclic chemistry and bioselectivity in honour of Adrien Albert and his enduring legacy. There are many interesting parallels between the ‘chemistry’ times of Adrien Albert and today and some aspects of this will also be touched upon.