Kenneth D. Karlin was born on October 30, 1948, in Pasadena, California,[1] a professor of chemistry at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

[2] Research in his group focuses on coordination chemistry relevant to biological and environmental processes, involving copper or heme complexes.

[3] Of particular interest are reactivities of such complexes with nitrogen oxides, O2, and the oxidation of substrates by the resultant compounds.

He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the book series Progress in Inorganic Chemistry.

[4] Karlin is the son of Stanford mathematician Samuel Karlin.