Benjamin Franklin Cravatt III is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.
[1] Considered a co-inventor of activity-based proteomics and a substantial contributor to research on the endocannabinoid system, he is a prominent figure in the field of chemical biology.
His father was a dentist and his mother a dental hygienist, both of whom instilled in Cravatt an interest in biology as a child.
[1][3] He then received a PhD in Macromolecular and Cellular Structure and Chemistry from The Scripps Research Institute in 1996,[1] where he worked under the joint supervision of Dale L. Boger and Richard Lerner.
His early contributions to the cannabinoid field include identification and characterization of the endocannabinoid-terminating enzyme fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH),[1] as well as the isolation of the novel soporific compound oleamide from cerebrospinal fluid.