4  Total synthesis highlights

This report surveys the organic chemistry literature of 2003. Due to our continued interest as a community in the total synthesis of natural products, the number of total syntheses published each year is vast. It would be impossible to review with any meaning every natural product synthesis which appeared in the literature in 2003. As such we have elected to present an overview of what we personally considered to be the most interesting successful total syntheses of the last year. We apologise to those many researchers who reported elegant total syntheses in 2003, which were not selected.