Gary Schuster

Gary Benjamin Schuster ( born August 6, 1946 in New York City ) is an American chemist. He is a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology, which he was president from time to time.

Schuster studied chemistry at Clarkson College of Technology with a bachelor 's degree in 1968 and in 1971 received his doctorate at the University of Rochester. As a post - graduate student he was in the radiation chemistry in the U.S. Army and at Columbia University. He was for twenty years from 1975 professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, where he joined the chemistry faculty board from 1989 to 1994, and since 1994 at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was dean, Provost in 2006 and 2008 to 2009 interim President. He is there Vasser Woolley Professor.

He conducts research on oxidative damage to DNA, he found that the damage does not necessarily occur at the initial oxidation site but via cation radicals large distances ( hundreds of angstroms ) along the DNA can migrate. He also deals with the possibility to make with DNA nano -wire.

He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2009 he was one of the Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates. In 1994, he was Arthur C. Cope Scholar and in 2006 he received the Charles Holmes Herty Medal. In 1977 he was Sloan Fellow and Guggenheim Fellow in 1985.

Writings

• Long - Range Charge Transfer in DNA: Transient Structural Distortions Control the Distance Dependence, Accounts of Chemical Research 33, 2000, 253-260
• With W. Chen, G. Guler, E. Kuruvilla, H.-C. Chiu, E. Riedo Development of Self -Organizing, Self - Directing Molecular Nanowires: Synthesis and Characterization of Conjoined DNA -2 ,5 -bis (2- thienyl) pyrrole oligomer Macromolecules, 43, 2010, 4032-4040.
• With S. Kavanah, J. Joseph, CL Clevland, RN Barnett, U. Landman Oxidation of DNA: Damage to nucleobases, Acc. Chem Res, 43, 2010, 280-287.
• With S. One- electron oxidation Kavanah of DNA: thymine versus guanine reactivity, Org Biomol. Chem 8, 2010, 1340-1343.