Professor Dance is internationally recognised as one of the leading investigators of compounds in which a metal is combined with sulfur, selenium or tellurium (the 'chalcogen' elements). In this important and growing area of chemistry he has not only developed essential synthetic strategies, but has been responsible for the synthesis and characterisation of over half of the known categories of compound. An outstanding lateral chemical thinker, Professor Dance has used his metal-chalcogen research as the springboard for innovative contributions to the developing areas of supramolecular inorganic chemistry and gas-phase inorganic chemistry, as well as applications of computational inorganic chemistry. He received the Inorganic Chemistry Award of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute in 1996.