Jeremy Knowles

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Jeremy Randall Knowles, CBE (1935-) is a Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, was Dean of the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences from 1991 to 2002. He joined Harvard in 1974, received many awards for his research, and has remained at Harvard ever since, leaving the faculty for a decade to serve as Dean.

In 2006, he was selected by incoming interim president Derek Bok to return to his position as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on an interim basis, replacing William C. Kirby, who was ousted by ousted president Lawrence Summers. [1]

[edit] Life and work

Knowles was born in England in 1935, educated at Magdalen College School, Oxford, and later Balliol College (where he took a BA in 1959 and his PhD. in 1961). He was a Pilot Officer in the Royal Air Force. He later became Fellow and Tutor at Wadham College, Oxford, took a post-doc fellowship at Caltech, and was a visiting professor at Yale. He then became a Sloan visiting professor at Harvard, and then a permanent professor there.

Knowles's research has been on the boundary of chemistry and biochemistry, and has concerned the rate and specificity of enzyme catalysis and the evolution of protein function. He is the author of more than 250 research papers, and has advised more than 50 Ph.D. recipients at Oxford and at Harvard.

Knowles married the former Jane Sheldon Davis in 1960, and they have three sons.