Preface and Acknowledgements

To me, there seem to be only two reasons for writing a book. The first is to
disseminate new knowledge and, for many branches of science, this is better
done through the plethora of scientific journals that exist today. The second
reason is to deliver a new treatment of a subject and that, precisely, is what this
book sets out to do.
Carbohydrates are mentioned or implied in a household context every day
Ð ``pass the sugar, please'', ``you won't have any energy if you don't eat
properly'', ``you need to have more fibre in your diet'', ``I hear he's suffering
from the sugar'' (diabetes) and so on it goes. In fact, for decades, carbohydrates
were simply viewed as the powerhouse that provided the energy to drive the
many biochemical processes that keep us going. Carbohydrates lived in the
shadow of two other great biomolecules, proteins and nucleic acids, until
scientists realized the connection between the structural diversity of carbohy-
drates and their role in a whole range of biochemical processes.
Today, carbohydrates are implicated in intercellular recognition, bacterial and
viral infection processes, the fine tuning of protein structure, the inflammation
event and some aspects of cancer, to name but a few. This broadening of
carbohydrate activity has caused a renaissance in structure determination and
synthetic activity, so much so that some of the top chemists and biochemists in the
world have been attracted to this area of intractable ``gums and syrups'',
previously the domain of those strange, misguided people called ``sugar chemists''.
This book, then, will tell you all about carbohydrates. It will give the basic
knowledge about the subject, bound together with some of the history and
feeling of the times. What was it really like in Emil Fischer's laboratory in the
late 1800s? Who followed in the great man's footsteps, who are the emerging
giants of carbohydrate chemistry? When a subject is too large or demanding to
be treated in the depth that this book allows, pertinent references will be given
to aid the reader. A general comment on the selection of references: when
deemed appropriate, the reference to an original piece of work will be given;
otherwise, use will be made of a modern review article or a recent paper which
nicely summarizes the area.
xii Preface and Acknowledgements

All in all, this is a modern book about an old subject, but one which
continues to show more of its true self as the years pass by ± I enjoyed writing it,
I hope that you will enjoy reading it!
The book presumes that the reader will have a knowledge of general organic
chemistry, probably to the second year level, but requires no background in
carbohydrates. The strength of the book is synthesis, ultimately that of the bond
which holds two sugar residues together. Towards the end, when the demands
of size and subject matter authority were coming into play, an effort was made
to introduce pertinent aspects of ``glycobiology'', the role of carbohydrates in
the world of biology. However, the author stresses the need to consult other
works to gain any real knowledge about glycobiology and related subjects ±
indeed, the text by Lehmann (see the Appendix) would be an excellent adjunct
to the book here.
Sheri Harbour typed the entire manuscript and it was read, with many
suggestions for improvement, by the ``Elm Street Boys'', David Vocadlo and
Spencer Williams, and Steve Withers, Bruce Stone, John Stevens and Matthew
Tilbrook. Steve Withers and the Department of Chemistry at the University of
British Columbia were my patrons during the writing and Frieder Lichtenthaler
kindly helped with the photographs of Fischer. To all of these people, my
sincere thanks.

Robert V. Stick