The author of guest editorial on the drug discovery process, is Dan Lednicer. Lednicer received his BS in Chemistry at Antioch College. He then went on to Ohio State as part of what has been dubbed the "Class of 52", the very first wave of recipients of NSF fellowships. He received his Ph.D. in 1955 for his thesis with M.S. Newman entitledThe Synthesis and Resolution of Hexahelicene. After wetting his feet in the pharmaceutical industry at G.D.Searle, he proceeded to Duke in 1956 where he was a post-doc with Charles Hauser for two years and then for a year with Elias J. Corey at the University of Illinois.
As a synthetic chemist at the Upjohn Company, where he started in 1959, he published over 60 research papers and was awarded a like number of US Patents. In 1976 he proceeded on to managerial positions at Mead Johnson, Adria Labs and then the Analytical Biochemistry Co. In 1989 Dan joined the National Cancer Institute (NIH) where he was project officer for synthetic, analytical and drug formulation contracts. His name appears on the spine of a dozen books.
He is perhaps best known as co-author and author of the six volumes of "The Organic Chemistry of Drug Synthesis" (Wiley) and author of the recent "Strategies for Organic Drug Synthesis and Design" (Wiley 1999) available through Amazon. You might also like to read the story of bromadol as told by its inventor Dan Lednicer.
Read Lednicer's editorial on drug evolution