Stephen J. Lippard

Stephen James Lippard, born October 12, 1940, is an American chemist regarded as one of the founders of bioinorganic chemistry, the study of how metal ions function in biological systems. His research established much of the mechanistic understanding of how cisplatin and related platinum-based anticancer drugs bind to DNA, and his laboratory has also studied how metal complexes intercalate with and alter the structure of DNA more broadly. Lippard spent most of his career at Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he became the Arthur Amos Noyes Professor, and he remains active in research and mentoring.