Dennis A. Dougherty (born December 4, 1952, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) is the George Grant Hoag Professor of Chemistry at California Institute of Technology.
His research applies physical organic chemistry to systems of biological importance.
Dougherty utilizes a variety of approaches to further our understanding of the human brain, including the in vivo nonsense suppression methodology for incorporating unnatural amino acids into a variety of ion channels for structure-function studies.
In 2005 he published a textbook entitled Modern Physical Organic Chemistry with co-author Eric V. Anslyn.
[3] He currently lives in South Pasadena with his wife Dr. Ellen Dougherty, the superintendent of the Lawndale Elementary School District.