Douglas C. Rees

Rees graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in 1974 working with Carolyn Slayman and received a PhD in biophysics from Harvard University in 1980.^[2][3] He subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowshing with James B. Howard at the University of Minnesota^[4]. In 1982 he went to the University of California, Los Angeles.^[2] In 1989, he became a professor of chemistry at Caltech.^[2] There he is Roscoe Gilkey Dickinson Professor and was Dean of graduate studies from 2015-2020.^[5] From 1997 to 2025, he was an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute^[6]. He served as the editor or co-editor of the Annual Review of Biophysics and Biomolecular Structure (2004–2014).^[7][8]

He examines the structure and function of metal-containing and membrane proteins,^[5] especially nitrogenase in biological nitrogen fixation,^[9][10] and membrane proteins including ABC transporters and mechanosensitive ion channels including MscL^[11][12] and MscS^[13]. To do this, his group uses X-ray crystallography. His interest in nitrogenase began in William Lipscomb's laboratory.^{[citation needed]}

In 2015 he received the FA Cotton Medal^[14], and in 2020 he was awarded the Gregori Aminoff Prize^[15]. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences^[16], National Academy of Sciences^[17], and was a Sloan Research Fellow^{[citation needed]}.