Peter Dervan

Peter B. Dervan (born June 28, 1945) is the Bren Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. The primary focus of his research is the development and study of small organic molecules that can sequence-specifically recognize DNA. The most important of these small molecules are pyrrole–imidazole polyamides. Dervan attended Boston College High School and received his B.S. degree from Boston College in 1967, He then became an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Stanford, working with Eugene van Tamelen.

Career

Dervan became an assistant professor of chemistry at Caltech in 1973, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1987), and the American Philosophical Society (2002). He is an elected member of the French Academy of Sciences (2000) and the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (2004– ).

Dervan is a co-founder and founding member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Gilead Sciences (1987). He served on the Board of Directors for Beckman Coulter beginning in 1997. He served as a Trustee of Yale University (2008–2017). In 2014, he presented the ACS Chemical Biology Lecture. he became chair of the scientific advisory board of the Robert A. Welch Foundation.

Research While teaching a class at Caltech in Advanced Organic Chemistry, Dervan came to a realization that would guide his future career: rather than working to "close" a classic problem that had been previously defined, he would seek to define and "open" a new research area that could be studied for many years.

The most important of these small molecules are pyrrole–imidazole polyamides. Dervan's lab has identified pairing rules to control the DNA sequence specificity of minor-groove binding polyamides that contain the aromatic ring amino acids hydroxypyrrole (Hp), imidazole (Im), and pyrrole (Py).

Awards Dervan has received a number of awards for both research and teaching, A minor planet has been named in his honor, 4314 Dervan.

1988 – Harrison Howe Award 1993 – Arthur C. Cope Award 1993 – Willard Gibbs Award 1994 – William H. Nichols Medal, for "his outstanding contributions in the field of bioorganic chemistry through the design and synthesis of sequence-specific DNA cleaving molecules." 1996 – Maison de la Chimie Foundation Prize 1998 – Remsen Award 1998 – Kirkwood Medal, for “outstanding research contributions, theoretical or experimental, in the physical sciences.” 1999 – Alfred Bader Award 1999 – Max Tishler Prize 1999 – Linus Pauling Award 1999 – Richard C. Tolman Medal 2000 – Tetrahedron Prize 2002 – Harvey Prize (Israel) 2005 – Ronald Breslow Award 2005 – Wilbur Cross Medal 2006 – National Medal of Science 2022 – Priestley Medal

Personal In 1990, Dervan married Jacqueline Barton, a fellow chemist and professor at Caltech. He has a son, Andrew, from a previous marriage, and a daughter, Elizabeth, from his marriage with Barton.

Selected publications