Stephen J. Lippard

Stephen Lippard married Judith Ann Drezner in 1964. They have two sons, Josh and Alex, a daughter-in-law Sandra, and twin granddaughters, Lucy and Annie. Judy Lippard died on September 9, 2013. Stephen moved to Washington, DC, in 2017, where he remains active in science, writing, consulting, and grandfathering, while expanding his harpsichord playing and cooking skills.

In 2011 Lippard founded Blend Therapeutics with Omid Cameron Farokhzad and Robert Langer, in Watertown, Massachusetts. Blend focused on developing anti-cancer medicines for treatment of solid tumor cancers, with the goal of targeting cancerous tissue and leaving healthy cells alone. Its proprietary drug candidates included BTP-114, a cisplatin prodrug, and BTP-277, a targeting ligand designed to bond selectively to tumor cells. As of 2016, Blend split off into two separate companies: Tarveda and Placon, to follow these two approaches.

Lippard and his students have also studied the synthesis of diiron complexes such as diiron hydroxylase to better understand the activities of metal atoms in biological molecules. They have developed model compounds for carboxylate-bridged diiron metalloenzymes which can be compared with corresponding biological forms. They have synthesized analogues of the diiron carboxylate cores of MMO and related carboxylate-bridged diiron proteins such as the dioxygen transporter hemerythrin. In 2010, Lippard received the Ronald Breslow Award for his work on nonheme iron proteins.

Lippard has received many awards throughout his career, most notably the 2004 National Medal of Science, the 2014 Priestley Medal of the American Chemical Society, its highest award, and the 2014 James R. Killian lectureship at MIT, given to one faculty member of the Institute per year. He is also the recipient of the Linus Pauling Medal, Theodore W. Richards Medal, and the William H. Nichols Medal. For his work in bioinorganic and biomimetic chemistry, Lippard received the Ronald Breslow Award and the Alfred Bader Award from the American Chemical Society (ACS). For research in inorganic and organometallic chemistry, as well as his role as an educator, he was honored with ACS awards for Inorganic Chemistry and for Distinguished Service in Inorganic Chemistry. In 2015, Lippard won the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry bestowed by The Franklin Institute. In 2016, he received the F. A. Cotton Medal for excellence in chemical research and the Welch Award in Chemistry from the Robert A. Welch Foundation. In 2017, he was chosen to receive the American Institute of Chemists Gold Medal.

Lippard has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. He is an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy (2002), the Italian Chemical Society (1996), and the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina) (2004), and is an external scientific member of the Max-Planck Institute (1996) in Germany.

Lippard has co-authored over 900 scholarly and professional articles, and co-authored the textbook Principles of Bioinorganic Chemistry (1994) with Jeremy Berg. He edited the book series Progress in Inorganic Chemistry from Volume 11 to 40. He was an Associate Editor of the journal Inorganic Chemistry from 1983 to 1989, and an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society from 1989 to 2013, as well as serving on the editorial boards of numerous other journals.

In 1983, Lippard returned to MIT as a Professor of Chemistry. He has held the Arthur Amos Noyes Professorship of Chemistry at MIT since 1989. He and his wife Judy were housemasters at MIT's MacGregor House from 1991 to 1995. Lippard served as the head of the MIT chemistry department from 1995 to 2005. He is recognized for his scientific work and for his work with students, having mentored more than 100 PhDs. His students are active in a wide range of areas, in part because "He delivers a strong message that you need to go to the frontier of science and pick interesting problems." Forty percent of his graduate students have been women, who he gives "high-risk, high-reward projects".

Lippard joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1966 as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 1969 and full Professor in 1972.

Cisplatin is one of the most frequently used chemotherapy medications for many forms of cancer. It was discovered in the 1960s by Barnett Rosenberg, but its mechanism of action was not understood.

Lippard was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School in 1958. He earned his bachelor's degree from Haverford College in 1962. Originally interested in attending medical school, a talk on medicinal chemistry by visiting chemist Francis P.J. Dwyer inspired Lippard to focus on inorganic chemistry for his Ph.D. Lippard worked with F. Albert Cotton at MIT on rhenium oxo complexes and clusters. He completed the thesis Chemistry of the bromorhenates, receiving his Ph.D. from MIT in 1965.

Stephen James Lippard (born October 12, 1940) is the Arthur Amos Noyes Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is considered one of the founders of bioinorganic chemistry, studying the interactions of nonliving substances such as metals with biological systems. He is also considered a founder of metalloneurochemistry, the study of metal ions and their effects in the brain and nervous system. He has done pioneering work in understanding protein structure and synthesis, the enzymatic functions of methane monooxygenase (MMO), and the mechanisms of cisplatin anticancer drugs. His work has applications for the treatment of cancer, for bioremediation of the environment, and for the development of synthetic methanol-based fuels.