Larry Overman was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1943 and raised in Hammond, Indiana. He obtained a B.A. degree from Earlham College in 1965, and completed his doctoral dissertation in 1969 with Professor Howard W. Whitlock, Jr., at the University of Wisconsin. After a NIH postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Ronald Breslow at Columbia University, he joined the faculty at the University of California, Irvine, in 1971, where he is now Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. Professor Overman's research interests center on the invention of new reactions and strategies in organic synthesis and the total synthesis of natural products and their congeners. Using synthesis strategies developed largely in his laboratory, Professor Overman's group has completed total syntheses of more than 80 structurally complex natural products.