Gordon M. Cragg

Dr. Gordon M. Cragg obtained his undergraduate training in chemistry at Rhodes University, South Africa, and his D. Phil. (organic chemistry) from Oxford University in 1963. After two years of postdoctoral research at the University of California, Los Angeles, he returned to S. Africa to join the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. In 1966, he joined Chemistry Department at the University of South Africa and transferred to the University of Cape Town in 1972. In 1979, he returned to the US to join the Cancer Research Institute at Arizona State University working with Professor G. R. Pettit. In 1985, he moved to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, and was appointed Chief of the NCI Natural Products Branch in 1989. He retired in December 2004 and is currently serving as an NIH Special Volunteer. Dr. Cragg’s major interests lie in the discovery of novel natural product agents for the treatment of cancer and AIDS, with an emphasis on multidisciplinary and international collaboration. He has given over 100 invited talks at conferences in many countries worldwide, and has been awarded NIH Merit Awards for his contributions to the development of the anticancer drug, Taxol® (1991), leadership in establishing international collaborative research in biodiversity and natural products drug discovery (2004), contributions to developing and teaching NIH technology transfer courses (2004), and dedicated service to the NCI in developing and maintaining evidence-based PDQ cancer information summaries for health professionals and the public (2010). In 1998-1999 he was President of the American Society of Pharmacognosy and was elected to Honorary Membership of the Society in 2003; he was named as a Fellow of the Society in 2008. In November 2006, he was awarded the “William L. Brown Award for Plant Genetic Resources” by Missouri Botanical Garden which also named a recently discovered Madagascar plant in his honor, Ludia craggiana. In April 2010, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science by his South African alma mater, Rhodes University, and in March 2012, a special issue of the Journal of Natural Products was published in his honor. Dr. Cragg has established collaborations between the NCI and organizations in many countries promoting drug discovery from their natural resources. He has published over 150 chapters and papers related to these interests.