Organic/Medicinal chemist, Dan Lednicer, Ph.D. has been a long-term volunteer for the Office of NIH History.

His career was spent largely in the search for new therapeutic agents. This comprised close to two decades as a bench chemist at the now-defunct UpJohn Company in Kalamazoo, Michigan. His work resulted in 75 papers in peer-reviewed and refereed journals and several U.S. Patents. He left UpJohn to assume managerial positions at Mead Johnson, Adria Laboratories and ultimately the contract firm, ABC Laboratories. In 1989 Dr. Lednicer left the private sector for a position at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. At NCI he served in the extramural program as Project Officer, first in the Drug Synthesis and Chemistry Branch and subsequently in the Pharmaceutical Resources Branch.

Dr. Lednicer's name appears on the spine of approximately a dozen technical books. His recent New Drug Discovery and Development (Wiley, 2006) is an account of the history of major drug classes addressed to a general reading audience.