Kendall Newcomb Houk is a Distinguished Research Professor in Organic Chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles.

His research group studies organic, organometallic, and biological reactions using the tools of computational chemistry.

(1966), and Ph.D. (1968) degrees at Harvard, working with R. A. Olofson as an undergraduate and R. B. Woodward as a graduate student in the area of experimental tests of orbital symmetry selection rules.

Houk received the Akron American Chemical Society (ACS) Section Award in 1984.

He was the Saul Winstein Chair in Organic Chemistry at UCLA from 2009 to 2021 and is now a Distinguished Research Professor.

He has been a member of the NIH Medicinal Chemistry Study Section and the NRC Board of Chemical Sciences and Technology.

He co-chaired the NIH-DOE-NSF Workshop on Building Strong Academic Chemistry Departments Through Gender Equity in 2006.