George M. Whitesides was born August 3, 1939 in Louisville, KY. He received an A.B. degree from Harvard University in 1960 and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology (with J.D. Roberts) in 1964. He was a member of the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1963 to 1982. He joined the Department of Chemistry of Harvard University in 1982, and was Department Chairman 1986-89, and Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry from 1982-2004. He is now the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor.
Professor Whitesides and his group work in four areas: biochemistry, materials science, catalysis and physical organic chemistry. Professor Whitesides has made seminal contributions in the area of self-assembled monolayers, most notably his development of a family of techniques for patterning molecules or materials on a surface, called soft lithography.