Professor Samuel J. Danishefsky

Internationally recognized leader in chemistry

Samuel Danishefsky completed his BS at YeshivaUniversity in 1956 and his PhD at HarvardUniversity with Peter Yates.  Following postdoctoral studies at ColumbiaUniversity with Gilbert Stork, he began his independent  academic career in 1963 at the University of Pittsburgh, where he became Professor in 1971. 

In 1980, he moved to YaleUniversity, but returned to New York in 1993 as Professor of Chemistry at ColumbiaUniversity and Kettering Professor at the MemorialSloan Kettering  CancerCenter.  His research interests include synthetic strategy, reagent development, cytotoxic natural products, and fully synthetic carbohydrate-based tumor antigens.  Over the course of his career, Professor Danishefsky has received numerous honors, including the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (1996), the ACS Cope Medal (1998), the HC Brown Award (2000), the Benjamin Franklin Award (2006), the NAS Award in the Chemical Sciences (2006), the ACS Roger Adams Award in Organic Chemistry, and the American Association for Cancer Research, Inaugural Award for Chemistry in Cancer Research (2007).  He has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1986.