John Montgomery
Office Address
930 N. University
Department of Chemistry
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1055
Telephone
(734)764-4424
Biography
John Montgomery grew up in Albemarle, N.C. and studied chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating in 1987. While at UNC, he conducted research under the direction of Profs. Joe Templeton and Maurice Brookhart where his experience sparked his interest in organometallic chemistry. During this time, he became a huge Tarheel fan while living in the same dorm as Michael Jordan during his freshman year. He then went on to receive his Ph.D. at Colorado State University in 1991 under the direction of Prof. Louis Hegedus, and he was an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California at Irvine from 1991 – 1993 with Prof. Larry Overman.
In 1993, he began his independent career at Wayne State University, and he moved to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 2005. In 2013 he was appointed as the Margaret and Herman Sokol Professor of Synthetic Chemistry, and in 2020, he was named as an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor for undergraduate teaching. He is a member of the Michigan Chemistry-Biology Interface Training Program funded by NIGMS, having served as Director for ten years, and he is a member of the Interdepartmental Program in Medicinal Chemistry and the Program in Chemical Biology. The Montgomery group is part of the Catalysis Innovation Consortium and was part of the NSF Center for Selective C-H Functionalization (CCHF) and the NIH Common Fund Program in Glycoscience. In addition to working with his terrific research group of students and postdoctorals, he also enjoys teaching and mentoring the diverse population of undergraduate students at Michigan. He has served as a member of the Advisory Board on Intercollegiate Athletics and as the chair of the Academic Performance committee for Michigan Athletics. He enjoys supporting the U of M student-athlete community and attending games with his wife and two daughters.
John has received a number of awards including a Pfizer Michigan Green Chemistry Award (2007), American Chemical Society Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2001), Johnson and Johnson Focused Giving Grant (2001), Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award (1998), National Science Foundation CAREER Award (1996), 3M Corporation New Faculty Award (1996), a Rackham Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award (2017), an LSA Individual Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education (2018), a Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award (2023), and he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2011). He has graduated 47 Ph.D. students from his lab, published >115 scientific publications, and presented >280 invited lectures over his career.