Foreword to professor athelstan L. J. Beckwith special issue

Several contributions made by Professor Athelstan L. J. Beckwith, FRACI, FAA, FRS, AO in the field of physical organic chemistry and free radical research are presented. He began to investigate the mechanisms of some reactions of diazonium salts while working as a graduate assistant at UWA. Athel studied for a DPhil with W. A. Waters at Oxford in the new field of free radical chemistry. Athel studied the mechanism of free radical aromatic substitution and with the help of his newly developed expertise in chromatography, completed his DPhil in two years, the degree being conferred in 1956. He did research on the commercial applications of wool wax at CSIRO in Melbourne. It was the study of the lanosterol present in wool wax that led him to investigate an unusual oxidation product of the related cholesterol. He concluded that the unusual product, 25-hydroxycholesterol, resulted from the hydrogen abstraction by oxygen-centered radicals from crystalline cholesterol.