C G James Bashkin and his wife Shelley Shray with the 1994 Thomas and Hochwalt Award which he shared with Michael Stern P R O F I L E James K. Bashkin was born in Iowa City USA in 1958 but spent most of his early years in Tucson Arizona. After attending the University of Arizona for a year he transferred to the University of California at Irvine. After graduating in 1977 he went to Oxford to do his graduate work with Malcolm L. H. Green. His graduate work involved primarily the structural and synthetic chemistry of molybdenocene dimers. He obtained a D. Phil. in organometallic chemistry in 1982 and then moved to R. H. Holm’s group at Harvard where he was an NIH postdoctoral fellow. In the Holm Group he worked on synthetic models for the iron-molybdenum cofactor (FeMoco) of nitrogenase iron thiololate species and a soluble cobalt sulfide that contains the Co8S6 cluster unit found in the mineral pentlandite.James Bashkin– patents. He has remained active in the green chemistry arena as a consultant for Flexsys and through a new program to broaden the scope of his original NASH reaction so that it can serve as a general method for halide-free bond formation. Recently Professor Jim Bashkin was chosen as one of 125 scientists and engineers world-wide to contribute to a document to help define environmentally sustainable technologies for the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies in Seville an institute of the EC’s Joint Research Centre.The final report is to be delivered to European Policy makers. Information on Professor Bashkin’s green chemistry research can be found at http://wunmr.wustl.edu/Faculty/Bashkin/ jkbgreen.html. Contact information Tel.+1 (314) 935-4801. Fax +1 (314) 935-4481. Email bashkin@wuchem.wustl.edu our Associate Editor for the Americas He then took a position at Monsanto in the Chemical Sciences Department of Corporate Research. During this time (1985-91) he developed programs on solid-state reference electrodes a new green chemistry version of nucleophilic aromatic substitution and catalytic chemotherapy based on functional mimics of ribozymes. The green chemistry was recently commercialized in Europe by Flexsys; it is an example of nucleophilic aromatic substitution for hydrogen (NASH).Flexsys is a joint venture between Solutia (formerly Monsanto’s chemical company) and Akzo Nobel. In 1994 Professor Bashkin and co-inventor M. K. Stern shared Monsanto’s highest science and technology award the Thomas and Hochwalt prize for this chemistry and in 1998 they and a group of colleagues received the President’s Green Chemistry Challenge Award for Alternative Synthetic Pathways (http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/greenchemistry/ past.htm). Professor Bashkin was appointed to the Editorial Advisory Board of Chemical Reviews in 1991 co-chaired the NSF Organometallic Workshop (1988-1990) and served on an NSF review panel for SBIR grants. In 1991 Professor Bashkin joined the chemistry faculty at Washington University as an Assistant Professor. He has continued to pursue bio-organic and - inorganic approaches to catalytic drugs and to study the mechanism of RNA transesterification and hydrolysis. In 1998 he guest-edited a thematic issue of Chemical Reviews on ‘RNA/DNA Cleavage Chemistry’ and contributed the article on ribozyme mimics. Professor Bashkin has published more than 45 papers and is an inventor on 6 U.S. G40 Green Chemistry April 1999