Professor Pelletier received a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois in 1947 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Cornell University in 1950. He was an instructor at the University of Illinois from 1950-51, and served on the faculty of Rockefeller University from 1951-62, before joining the faculty at UGA. He received the Herty Medal of the Georgia Section of the American Chemical Society in 1971, the Southern Chemist Award in 1972, and the Research Achievement Award of American Society of Pharmacognosy in 1991. He is the Director of the Institute for Natural Products Research and his research interests are in the chemistry and synthesis of natural products of biological interest.
Our research involves the chemistry and spectroscopic properties of naturally occurring compounds of biological interest. Projects include research on plant alkaloids, terpenes, insect pheromones, phytoalexins, plant pigments, the synthesis of natural products, and the application of spectroscopic methods to the elucidation of the molecular structure of natural products. Of specific interest are the very toxic alkaloids of Aconitum, Delphinium, and Consolida species. Our objective is to elucidate the chemical structures, stereochemistry, and properties of these alkaloids.
B.S. Joshi, Q. Jiang, T. Rho and S.W. Pelletier, "The Synthesis of Radermachol", J. Org. Chem. 1994, 55, 8220.
S.K. Srivastava, B.S. Joshi, M.G. Newton, D. Lee and S.W. Pelletier, "Heterolytic Fragmentation of Deltaline, a Norditerpenoid Alkaloid", Tetrahedron Letters 1995, 36, 519.