Professor Andrew Hamilton

Professor Andrew Hamilton

President, New York University

Honorary Fellow; Former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford
 

Biography

Professor Hamilton read chemistry at the University of Exeter. After studying for a master’s degree at the University of British Columbia, he received his PhD from Cambridge University in 1980 and then spent a post-doctoral period at the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg. 

In 1981 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Princeton University then in 1988 served as a department chair and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh. He joined Yale in 1997 and was a Provost of Yale from 2004 until October 2008 where he combined a wide-range of administrative duties with teaching and research.

Achievements during his time as Provost of Yale included the acquisition of the West Campus, the re-establishment of the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science after a 40-year hiatus, a reform of the tenure process and the significant enhancement of the Yale undergraduate curriculum. In addition to serving as Provost he was Benjamin Silliman Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. 

His research interests lie at the interface of organic and biological chemistry, with particular focus on the use of synthetic design for the understanding, mimicry and potential disruption of biological processes. 

Professor Hamilton’s academic achievements have been widely recognised internationally. In 1999 he received the Arthur C Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society, and in 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He was elected a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010 and received the International Izatt Christiansen Award in Macrocyclic Chemistry in 2011.