David Beveridge David L. Beveridge, a native of Coshocton, Ohio, graduated from Wooster in 1959 with a major in chemistry. He then received the Ph.D. in theoretical physical chemistry from the University of Cincinnati. He was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the Centre de Mecanique Ondulatoire Applique in Paris, France, with Dr. Odilon Chalvet, and subsequently at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with Nobel Prize-winner John A. Pople. At Carnegie Mellon, he worked on the development of INDO molecular orbital theory and carried out applications of the INDO method with some of the first studies of unpaired spin densities and hyperfine coupling constants in free radicals. Working with Pople, he co-authored the book Approximate Molecular Orbital Theory.

In 1968, Beveridge joined the faculty of the City University of New York, in a joint appointment with Hunter College Chemistry Department and The Mount Sinai School of Medicine. At Hunter, he was active in teaching physical chemistry and in research on the structure of water, aqueous solutions and biological water and was involved in programs targeted for under-represented minorities, supported by the Minority Biomedical Science Programs of NIH. He was a key player in the development of the Center for Gene Structure and Function, which is still operating at Hunter and was named Thomas Hunter Professor in 1984.

Beveridge moved to Wesleyan University in 1986 as Professor of Chemistry and developed an interdepartmental program in the newly emerging field of Molecular Biophysics. The program was funded by NIH as a graduate training program. The research that Beveridge and his students pursue has become increasingly focused on computer modeling and related theoretical studies of DNA structure and motions, solvation and the DNA bending problem. He has received 30 years of continuous research funding from the NIH and, in 1988, a Merit Award by NIH and ten years of forward funding. At Wesleyan, Beveridge served as Dean of Natural Sciences and Mathematics from 1992 to 1999. In that capacity, he was active in affirmative action initiatives in the Sciences at Wesleyan, developing with his colleagues new educational initiatives integrating teaching and research; a Science Writing Program; and a set of courses on the intellectual foundations of science for a program of general education. He is particularly interested in the pedagogy of active learning, cooperative learning, the "discussion-based class," and educational use of the Internet and related technology.

Beveridge has supervised 12 Ph. D. Students and authored or co-authored some 200 papers in the scientific literature. He has served two terms on the Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry Study Section of NIH and is or has been an associate editor of Biophysical Journal, Biopolymers, Proteins: Structure Function and Genetics, and Biopolymers. His current research is focused on studies of the structure and motions of various forms of the DNA double helix and the biological implications thereof. Recent articles from his lab have appeared in the Biophysical Journal, The Journal of Molecular Biology, The Journal of the American Chemical Society, The Journal of Physical Chemistry, and The Journal of Chemical Physics. An October issue of the Journal of Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics is a "festschrift" from his students and colleagues which commemorates his 60th birthday. His current close colleagues and collaborators in the field include Profs. Peter Kollman and Ken Dill at UCSF, Prof. Helen Berman at Rutgers University, and Dr. Richard Lavery of the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chemique in Paris and Professor Steven Harvey at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.