Dr. David Macmillan

Biography

David W. C. MacMillan is a distinguished scholar at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Princeton Branch, and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University. Born in Bellshill, Scotland, he obtained his undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of Glasgow and completed his doctoral studies under Professor Larry Overman at the University of California, Irvine. He conducted postdoctoral research with Professor Dave Evans at Harvard University and began his independent career at the University of California, Berkeley in 1998, moving to Caltech in 2000 as the Earle C. Anthony Chair in Organic Chemistry. In 2006, MacMillan joined Princeton University and served as Department Chair from 2010 to 2015. He is widely recognized for his contributions to the invention of new catalytic concepts, helping to establish the field of organocatalysis, an approach that was acknowledged with the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which he shared with Benjamin List. His group pioneered photoredox catalysis, which uses visible light to drive previously inaccessible chemical transformations, and these methods have been widely adopted in pharmaceutical discovery and industrial manufacturing. MacMillan’s laboratory has developed chemical biology tools, including µMap, a photocatalytic platform that enables detailed mapping of protein interactions, providing insights into cancer cell interactions and mechanisms of drug resistance. He has received numerous honors, including the ACS F.A. Cotton Medal for Excellence in Chemical Research and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2022.

Research Interests

Awards