Medicinal chemistry and drug discovery

Maurice-Marie Janot

Maurice-Marie Janot (1903–1978) was a French pharmacist and chemist who held Paris's chair of galenic pharmacy from 1941 to 1974 and co-founded the Institut de chimie des substances naturelles.

Paul S. Anderson

Paul S. Anderson, born 1938 in Vermont, is an American medicinal chemist who led discovery of the HIV drugs Crixivan and Sustiva at Merck and DuPont.

Sep 17, 2026

Percy Lavon Julian, also known as Percy Julian, was an American organic chemist who synthesized physostigmine and low-cost cortisone from soybeans and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1973.

Peter G. Schultz

Peter G. Schultz (born 1956) is an American chemist known for discovering catalytic antibodies and expanding the genetic code, and has led Scripps Research since 2015.

Peter S. Kim

Peter S. Kim is an American biochemist and medicinal chemist, a Stanford professor known for the gp41 structure behind HIV entry inhibitors and for leading Merck Research Laboratories.

Phil S. Baran

Phil S. Baran, born 1977 in Denville, New Jersey, is an American organic chemist at Scripps Research known for ideal synthesis, named reagents, and a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship.

Rafael Luque

Rafael Luque is a Spanish chemist in green chemistry and catalysis, known for converting biomass and waste into fuels, chemicals, and materials; he was suspended by the Universidad de Córdoba in 2022.

Ralph F. Hirschmann

Ralph F. Hirschmann (1922–2009) was a German-born American medicinal chemist at Merck who led the first solution synthesis of an enzyme, ribonuclease S, in 1969.

Raymond Dingledine

Raymond Dingledine is an American neuropharmacologist known for discovering that glycine acts with glutamate at NMDA receptors, and for epilepsy research that spawned two biotech companies.

Robert Elderfield

Robert Cooley Elderfield (1904–1979) was an American organic chemist known for cardiac glycosides, antimalarial research, and anticancer agents; he taught at Columbia and the University of Michigan.

Rudolf Wiechert

Rudolf Wiechert (1928–2013) was a German industrial organic chemist who led steroid chemistry research at Schering AG in Berlin, co-names the Hajos-Parrish-Eder-Wiechert reaction, and developed steroidal drugs including drospirenone.

Ryan A. Shenvi

Ryan A. Shenvi is an American organic chemist and professor at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, known for metal hydride atom transfer chemistry and terpene synthesis.

Seth B. Herzon

Seth B. Herzon is an American synthetic organic chemist and Yale professor known for short total syntheses of biologically active alkaloids and antibiotics, and for establishing how lomaiviticin A and colibactin damage DNA.

Sigmund Fraenkel

Sigmund Fraenkel, also written Siegmund Fränkel, was an Austrian physician, chemist, and pharmacologist who taught medical chemistry at Vienna and wrote Die Arzneimittel-Synthese, first published in 1901.

Oct 22, 2026

Sila-substitution

Sila-substitution, also called the silicon switch, is a medicinal chemistry method that replaces carbon atoms in drug candidates with silicon to alter activity and metabolism.

Stefan Bräse

Stefan Bräse is an organic chemist and full professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology since 2003, known for organic azide chemistry and OLED emitter design.

Syuzanna R. Harutyunyan

Syuzanna R. Harutyunyan is an Armenian chemist and, since 2018, professor and Chair of Homogeneous Catalysis at the University of Groningen, known for enantioselective Grignard chemistry and a 2023 catalytic oscillator.

Tan Choon Hong

Tan Choon Hong is a Singapore-based organic chemist and President's Chair Professor at Nanyang Technological University, known for chiral guanidine, pentanidium, and bisguanidinium organocatalysts and, since 2025, president of the Singapore National Academy of Science.