Edward C Taylor

Edward Curtis Taylor, Jr. (born August 3, 1923)) is an American chemist who designed and synthesized the chemotherapy drug pemetrexed (brand name Alimta), an inhibitor of purine biosynthesis, with grant support from the U.S. National Cancer Institute, NIH. Taylor studied for his PhD from 1946 to 1949 at Cornell University with Professor Cornelius Cain. As of 2009, royalties for this drug from Eli Lilly & Co. paid to Princeton University were sufficient to completely finance a state-of-the-art 263,000-square-foot (24,400 m²) chemistry laboratory building.

In 2006 Taylor was named a Hero of Chemistry by the American Chemical Society. Taylor has trained 187 PhD students.