Vladutz, George

It is a particular pleasure for me to see so many here who have an association with the Department of Information Studies in Sheffield. There are current and former students or researchers, collaborators, and others who are simply good friends. Janet Ash, my first research student in 1965, is here, still involved in the field. Bill Town, George Adamson, David Bawden, Peter Willett, George Vladutz, and John Barnard are here, and so too are all the current members of our chemical information research group. Peter Willett and I are grateful to the conference organisers and to the committee of the Chemical Structure Association, in particular, for the award of studentships which enable all of these to participate this week. 

The interrelation of reaction databases and synthesis design systems is brought into close focus this week by a variety of presentations, not least from the originator of many of the ideas on automatic reaction analysis and synthesis design, George Vladutz. 

Our first attempts were over-ambitious for the day, and our early work only modestly successful. Real success came only 10 or so years later, and that because George Vladutz held a Fellowship in our Department in the year that Peter Willett came to us as a student. George encouraged Peter to look afresh at the problem, with results which are known to all of you. Peter, more recently, has successfully extended the MGS work to 3-D MGS identification for pharmacophore identification. 

Major theoretical contributions to the field have been made by Mike Lynch, Peter Willett, George Vladutz and Robert Fugmann. 

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