Acknowledgements

An academic author faces the challenges of not only preparing a manuscript in their specialist field, but also making their published work accessible to the intended audience at a reasonable price. In the latter case, I am delighted to associate myself (as a fellow member) with the Royal Society of Chemistry, a not-for-profit publisher, which made this textbook available at the indicated price tag. I extensively used scientific databases such as PubChem, ChemSpider, PubMed, and ScienceDirect to source chemical/pharmacological information on the organic compounds and drugs discussed in this text. Some images of plants and animals were sourced from Wikipedia, to which I am very grateful. I thank my students for being my inspiration to write this book, and my iconic friends in the field of organic/medicinal chemistry, Professor Giovanni Lentini (University of Bari) and Professor John Nicholson (Queen Mary University of London), for their encouragement. Although the idea of writing this book was conceived long ago, it was realised during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2021. I am grateful to my family for allowing me to have the time to work on the project.