Professor Brice Bosnich, FRS (1936–2015) James D. Crowley, A,D W. Gregory Jackson, B and S. Bruce Wild C A Department of Chemistry, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand. B School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences, Chemistry, The University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy (UNSW@ADFA), Northcott Drive, Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia. C Research School of Chemistry, College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia. D Corresponding author. Email: jcrowley@chemistry.otago.ac.nz This special issue of the Australian Journal of Chemistry is dedicated to Professor Brice Bosnich, FRS (1936–2015) (Fig. 1). While Bos, as he was universally known, spent most of his career at University College London, University of Toronto, and The University of Chicago, he remained an authentic Australian. He often returned to Australia and spent time at the Australian National University (ANU), the University of Sydney, the University of Western Australia, and the Central Queensland University, Rockhampton. Perhaps more impor- tantly, he mentored several antipodean students and post- doctoral fellows who went on to become academics in Australia (Harrowfield, Wild, Jackson, Roberts) and New Zealand (McMorran and Crowley). Here ex-students (Fryzuk, Bergens, Hollis, Fraser, and Crowley) and post-docs (Harrowfield, Wild, Jackson, Leung, and McMorran) and colleagues (Lindoy) from around the globe come together to pay tribute to a superb sci- entist, mentor, and mate who died in Canberra on 13 April 2015. Bos was born in 1936 in the Queensland country town of Tully, the son of Croatian parents who had emigrated to Australia in 1928 after the devastation of their country during World War 1. Bos’s mother died when he was three years old. He lived with his mother’s sister in nearby Mossman, Qld, about 200 km from Tully, until he was ten and then with his cousin George’s family in West Hoxton near Liverpool, NSW, until he began high school as a boarder at St Gregory’s College, Campbelltown. Bos enjoyed cricket and was a good fast bowler. He was also a good tennis player. Bos graduated in chemistry from the University of Sydney in 1958 and completed his Ph.D. at the ANU in 1962 under the supervision of Francis Dwyer in the John Curtin School of Medical Research. Frankie Dwyer held a Personal Chair in the Biological Inorganic Chemistry Unit of the JCSMR and had a formidable reputation for his insights into transition metal coordination chemistry, especially stereochemistry and optical activity. Alan Sargeson (Sargo) was a junior colleague of Dwyer at that time and the influence of these two leaders remained with Bos throughout his career. Sargo and Bos maintained a lifelong friendship. [1] It was clear from an early stage that Bos was an extremely talented scientist, his first (with Dwyer and Sargeson) [2] and second [3] papers being published in Nature. Most of Bos’s Ph.D. work, however, was published [4] in the Australian Journal of Chemistry after Dwyer’s untimely death in 1962. After completing his Ph.D., Bos moved to University College London (UCL) as a post-doctoral fellow, initially as a DSIR Postdoctoral Fellow (1962–63) and then as an ICI Fellow (1963–66). As a post-doc, he carried out early work on the coordination chemistry of 1,4,8,11-tetraazacyclotetradecane (cyclam). [5] In 1966, Bos was appointed to a lectureship in UCL, where he shared a small laboratory with Martin Tobe next to Sir Ronald Nyholm’s office. Here, he began to examine the use of circular dichroism spectroscopy to determine the absolute configurations of coordination complexes. [6] Bruce Wild and Jack Harrowfield joined his group in 1968 and then moved with him the following year to the Lash Miller Chemical Laboratories of the University of Toronto. Greg Jackson followed shortly thereafter. Bos and these early Australian post-doctoral fellows carried out pioneering work on the resolution and coordination chemistry of chiral tertiary arsines and investigations into the circular dichroism spectra of octahedral cobalt(III) complexes. [7] Fig. 1. Bos in his office at The University of Chicago ca. 2002 (reproduced with the permission of the Department of Chemistry, The University of Chicago). CSIRO PUBLISHING Aust. J. Chem. 2016, 69, 485–488 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/CHv69n5_FO Journal compilation Ó CSIRO 2016 www.publish.csiro.au/journals/ajc Foreword RESEARCH FRONT