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David Parker MA DPhil CChem FRSC FRS (born 30 July 1956) is an English chemical scientist and academic.
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Early life and education
Parker was born in Leadgate, County Durham, the descendant of musical, mining families and the third child of a bank clerk and primary school teacher. He grew up in Durham City and was educated at Durham Johnston School and briefly at King Edward VI Grammar School, Stafford. Having gained an Open Exhibition to Christ Church, he read Chemistry at Oxford University, where he gained a First Class degree in 1978, and a DPhil in 1980, based on mechanistic studies in asymmetric catalysis. In this period he spent considerable periods of time on the cricket and football pitches around Oxford, and also married [1979], Fiona Mary MacEwan with whom he has two daughters, Eleanor and Julia Rose and a son, Philip.
In 1980, he gained a NATO Fellowship to work with Jean-Marie Lehn (Nobel Prize, 1987), and was appointed to a Lectureship in Chemistry at Durham University, beginning in January 1982.
Research and academic career
His work in Durham is rooted in the design and synthesis of functional molecules, materials and conjugates and has straddled the traditional disciplines of Physical, Organic and Inorganic Chemistry. Often collaborating with European and UK industry, he worked on diverse projects leading to the introduction of imaging and therapeutic agents, including the antibody conjugate MyloTargR (Celltech Ltd.). He gained recognition from the Royal Society of Chemistry, being awarded, among other prizes, the Corday-Morgan Medal (1987), the Hickinbottom Fellowship (1988), a Tilden Lectureship (2003) and the Ludwig Mond Medal (2011). In 2002 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and gained the Lecoq de Boisbaudran prize in rare earth science in 2012. He served as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry at Durham on two occasions before his fiftieth birthday. In 2014, he was made an EPSRC RISE Fellow, recognizing inspiration in science and engineering.