Frances Arnold

Frances H. Arnold is an American chemical engineer, born on 25 July 1956 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She studied mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University and earned a doctorate in chemical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1985. She has since worked at the California Institute of Technology. In 1993 she carried out the first directed evolution of enzymes, applying the principles of genetic change and selection that drive biological evolution to develop proteins that solve chemical problems; the results are used for more environmentally friendly manufacture of chemicals such as pharmaceuticals and for the production of renewable fuels. She received one half of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the directed evolution of enzymes. Interested early in energy technology, she formed a company in 2005 to produce renewable fuels.