Peter B. Dervan (born June 28, 1945) received his early education in Boston, Massachusetts (BS, Boston College, 1967). He began research in physical organic chemistry at Yale University. After earning his PhD degree in 1972, he spent a year at Stanford University as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow (1973). From Stanford he went to Pasadena to take up a faculty appointment at the California Institute of Technology, where he is now the Bren Professor of Chemistry.
Peter Dervan has pioneered a field of chemistry with studies directed toward understanding the chemical principles for the sequence-specific recognition of DNA. Dervan and his coworkers have created small molecules which can be programmed to bind a broad repertoire of DNA sequences with affinities and specificities comparable to Nature's proteins. Cell-permeable small molecules that modulate transcription factor-DNA interfaces may be useful for the external control of aberrant gene expression relevant in human disease.
Dervan is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, a Foreign Member of the French Academy of Sciences and the German National Academy of Sciences. His awards include the Harrison Howe Award (1988), Arthur C. Cope Award (1993), Willard Gibbs Medal (1993), Nichols Medal (1994), Maison de la Chimie Foundation Prize (1996), Remsen Award (1998), Kirkwood Medal (1998), Alfred Bader Award (1999), Max Tishler Prize (1999), Linus Pauling Medal (1999), Richard C. Tolman Medal (1999), Tetrahedron Prize (2000), Harvey Prize (Israel) (2002), Ronald Breslow Award (2005), and the Wilbur Cross Medal (2005). He received the 2006 National Medal of Science from President Bush at the White House on July 27, 2007.
Dervan is considered an outstanding teacher, having won several “excellence in teaching awards” from the Caltech undergraduates. He has mentored over 150 predoctoral and postdoctoral coworkers. In addition to teaching, research and administrative duties, he serves on several Scientific Advisory Boards for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, as well as the Robert A. Welch Foundation. He is a scientific co-founder of Gilead Sciences (1987), GeneSoft (1999), and is a member of the Board of Beckman Coulter (1997-). In 2008, he was elected Alumni Fellow of the Yale Corporation.