Floris Rutjes Floris Rutjes (1966) studied chemistry at the University of Amsterdam and received his PhD from the same University in 1993 on a subject concerning the synthesis of cyclic hydrazines and a-hydrazino acid derivatives (supervisor: Prof. W.N. Speckamp). Then, he moved to the group of Prof. KC Nicolaou (The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, US) to work as a post-doc on a total synthesis project. Two years later, having completed the synthesis of the marine natural product brevetoxin B, he returned to the University of Amsterdam to become an assistant professor in the group of Prof. Hiemstra and set up his own research program. Four years later, in 1999 he was appointed full professor in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Nijmegen, where he is currently residing. He is a member of the international advisory board of the European Journal of Organic chemistry and co-founder and advisor of the spin-off company Chiralix. In 1988 he received the Unilever Research Prize, in 2002 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society (KNCV), and recently he received the 2003 AstraZeneca Research in Organic Chemistry Award.