David MacMillan

MacMillan studied at the University of Glasgow with a Bachelor 's degree in 1991 and received his doctorate in 1996 at the University of California, Irvine, Larry E. Overman. As a post-doctoral fellow he was with David A. Evans at Harvard University. From 1998 he was at the University of California, Berkeley, and from 2000 at Caltech, where he was professor in 2004. Since 2006 he is a professor at Princeton University and the Director of The Merck Center of Catalysis. He has been a professor since 2010 James S. McDonnell Distinguished.

He developed new methods for the enantioselective ( asymmetric ) organocatalysis with application to the synthesis of a variety of natural products. He discovered new iminium catalysts and developed more than 50 new reaction processes. In 2007 he developed the SOMO catalysis ( Singly occupied molecular orbital Organocatalysis ) and 2008 organic photoredox catalysis.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society since 2012 and received the 2004 Corday - Morgan Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry. In addition, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2007 Arthur C. Cope Scholar. He also received the 2005 Tetrahedron Prize, the 2007 Mukaiyama Award, 2014 Harrison Howe Award and the 2006 Thieme- IUPAC Prize in Organic Synthesis. In 2002, he was a Sloan Fellow.

Since 2010 he is the editor of Chemical Science.