Peter B. Dervan is the Bren Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology.
Education
Dervan received his Bachelor of Surgery degree from Boston College. He began graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin then moved on to complete his graduate research at Yale University, in the laboratory of Jerome Berson. He received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from Yale, and was an National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at Stanford.
Career
The primary focus of his research is the development and study of small organic molecules that can sequence-specifically recognize deoxyribonucleic acid, a field in which he is an internationally recognized authority. The most important of these small molecules are pyrrole–imidazole polyamides. From Stanford, Dervan became an assistant professor of chemistry at Caltech.
He received tenure in 1979 and is currently the Bren Professor of Chemistry.
He served as Chair of Caltech"s Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering (1994-1999). He served on the Board of Directors for Beckman Coulter (1998-1911).
He is a Trustee of Yale University (since 2008). He was awarded the 2006 National Medal of Science in 2007 from President George Bush at the White House for his "fundamental research contributions" in organic chemistry.
In 2014, he presented the American College of Surgeons Chemical Biology Lecture.
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Membership
German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. National Academy of Sciences. French Academy of Sciences]
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (since 1986), the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (since 1987), the American Philosophical Society (since 2002).
He is a founding member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Gilead Sciences (since 1987).
He is an elected member of the French Academy of Sciences (since 2000) and the German Academy of Sciences (since 2004). He serves as a member of the Board of Scientific Governors of The Scripps Research Institute.