Peter B. Dervan (born June 28, 1945) is the Bren Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology.

[5][6] Peter B. Dervan was born on June 28, 1945, in Boston, Massachusetts, in an Irish immigrant family.

degree from Boston College in 1967,[7][8] where professor Francis Bennett sparked his interest in organic chemistry.

[5] He began graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin then moved with Jerome A. Berson's research group to Yale University where he completed his graduate research in physical organic chemistry,[9] studying ways in which chemical bonds are created and broken apart.

[16] He is an elected member of the French Academy of Sciences (2000)[17] and the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (2004- ).

[26] While teaching a class at Caltech in Advanced Organic Chemistry, Dervan came to a realization that would guide his future career: rather than working to "close" a classic problem that had been previously defined, he would seek to define and "open" a new research area that could be studied for many years.

Therefore, the ‘synthetic objective’ would be the three-dimensional assembly of multiple specific noncovalent bonds in aqueous media.

[8] The use of small molecules to regulate gene expression in living cells has possible application to human medicine.

[27][28] Dervan's lab has identified pairing rules to control the DNA sequence specificity of minor-groove binding polyamides that contain the aromatic ring amino acids hydroxypyrrole (Hp), imidazole (Im), and pyrrole (Py).