Background and Ethos of the Meeting

​In the late 1970’s, a number of UK chemists decided there was a need for a meeting which would emphasise synthetic organic chemistry. It was intended that the meeting would be informal and relaxed, in a similar way to the Gordon conferences. The first meeting was held in 1980. It has been lost in the mists of time as to who were the original organisers behind the meeting, but Garry Proctor and Alan Davidson (both at Cardiff) certainly played a major role in the early organisation. Key organisers throughout the 90’s and 00’s were Bernard Rawlings and Dave Kelly – the latter now remembered in the “Dave Kelly Cup” which is awarded to the most thought-provoking talk of the conference, as awarded by the current holder. ​​

 

The Gregynog Synthesis Workshop is an annual meeting held at Gregynog Hall, Newtown, at the end of summer and runs from Wednesday evening to Friday lunchtime for about 60 participants (typically 45 academics and 15 industrialists). The meeting is grounded in informality, curiosity and scientific communication. It is suitable for anyone with an interest in organic chemistry in the broadest sense (biological, catalysis, physical organic, supramolecular, target-oriented, etc.), and is aimed at bringing together new academics within the organic community,  peers at an equivalent stage in industry and more established colleagues who are still ‘young at heart’. Gregynog is a closed meeting which offers the chance to get supportive feedback from 50 peers on new, on-going and unusual results. With the exception of the plenary speakers, all talks will be at the board i.e. “chalk and talk” style - this helps to facilitate discussion and is in keeping with the informal style of the meeting.

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The ethos of the meeting is nicely captured within the acknowledgements section of a recently published paper entitled "Stereoselective synthesis of atropisomeric amides enabled by intramolecular acyl transfer" (DOI: 10.1039/D4SC05760K), which was reported in Chemical Science by research teams led by Dr Roly Armstrong and Dr Will Unsworth (two regular participants of the meeting). The sentence reads "Finally, we would like to acknowledge the committee and all participants of the Gregynog Synthesis Workshop 2022 – at which, the ideas that underpin this manuscript were seeded."​​​​