Holden Thorp

His mother, Olga "Bo" Thorp (née Bernardin, b. 1933), a 1956 UNC graduate, is a native of Columbia, South Carolina.

Her parents were Italian immigrants who died when she was 15.

He was an attorney who earned an undergraduate degree from UNC in 1954 and a law degree, also from UNC, in 1956.

Both of Thorp's parents were involved in creating Fayetteville Little Theater, now known as the Cape Fear Regional Theater, in 1962.

Herbert Holden Thorp (born August 16, 1964) is an American chemist, professor and entrepreneur.

He is a professor of chemistry at George Washington University.

Thorp's parents moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1960 and Thorp was born there on August 16, 1964.

He spent much of his youth involved with the theater, performing in productions led by his mother, and met his future wife, Patti Worden, in 1974 at the theater.

He attended St. Patrick Catholic School, a private middle school.

He is remembered as a good student who finished the algebra textbook by Thanksgiving, and a geometry book the following Easter.

In summer 1981, at age 17, while studying guitar at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Thorp won first place and a $500 prize in a northeast regional competition to solve a Rubik's Cube puzzle.

His motivation for entering the competition was to earn money to buy jazz records.

Winning the competition also earned him a trip to the national competition, which was shown on the television program That's Incredible!.

He came fifth in the national competition, and won first place again in a regional competition the following year, in Charlotte, North Carolina.

After graduating from Terry Sanford High School in 1982, Thorp attended the only university he had applied to, the University of North Carolina.

Thorp is a 1986 graduate of UNC; he later earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from California Institute of Technology, and was a postdoctoral associate at Yale University.

He was a pre-medical student initially, and later turned to chemistry and academia, earning a BS degree in 1986.

He completed doctoral work in three years instead of the normal five at the California Institute of Technology in 1989, earning a Ph.D. under Harry B. Gray at the age of 24.

He completed post-doctoral work with Gary Brudvig at Yale in 1990.

In 1991, Thorp began teaching as an associate professor of chemistry at North Carolina State University.

Thorp was awarded a Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1991 by the National Science Foundation, which provided $100,000 of research funding annually for five years.

Later that year, he was one of 20 people awarded a grant by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; the $500,000 fellowship was for research on compounds used in genetic therapy.

Both grants were for research to develop cancer and AIDS drugs as alternatives to chemotherapy.

Thorp's father, Herbert Holden "Herb" Thorp (d. 1996), was a native of Rocky Mount, North Carolina.

In 1996, Thorp co-founded the biotechnology company Alderaan Diagnostics, later renamed Xanthon, Inc., to commercialize a technology he co-developed.

The technology involved using electricity to test compounds that could later become new drugs.

It was intended to turn a process that previously took months into an electronic process that would instead take hours.

In 2001, Thorp was recognized by Fortune Small Business as a Small Business Innovator for the work that led to the founding of the company.

Xanthon raised several rounds of venture capital, totaling $25 million, before closing in 2002, after technical glitches had delayed release of its commercial product and it could not find further funding.

In 2005, Thorp co-founded Viamet Pharmaceuticals, another biotechnology company, to develop treatments for cancer and other diseases.

He was the tenth chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, assuming the position on July 1, 2008, succeeding James Moeser, and, at age 43, was noted as being among the youngest leaders of a university in the United States.

At the time of his selection as chancellor, Thorp was the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and a Kenan Professor of chemistry at the university.

Herb Thorp was its first president, and Bo Thorp was its creative director for 50 years until stepping down in April 2012.

In September 2012, Thorp announced his intention to resign following allegations of academic fraud, effective from June 30, 2013, and to return to teaching in the chemistry department at UNC, following a scandal involving the NCAA.

Shortly thereafter, in February 2013, he announced his decision to leave the university to take up the job of provost at Washington University in St. Louis.

He took over as provost on July 1, 2013, replacing Edward Macias.

Thorp stepped down as the provost of Washington University in St. Louis on July 15, 2019.

On August 19, 2019, Thorp was announced as the new editor-in-chief of Science magazine.

He continues to hold the Rita Levi-Montalcini Distinguished University Professorship of Chemistry and Medicine at Washington University.

In 2023 he became a Professor of Chemistry at George Washington University.