Philip S. Low, PhD, the Ralph C. Corley distinguished professor of chemistry at Purdue University, an inventor and entrepreneur with more than 100 patents to his credit, and an emeritus member of AACR, died March 4, 2026, at the age of 78.
He also served as Purdue’s Presidential Scholar for Drug Discovery and was for a time as director of the university’s Center for Drug Discovery.
Low held more than 100 U.S.-issued patents through Purdue Innovates and is listed on 600 U.S. and international patents and 145 invention disclosures. He founded seven companies based on based on work conducted at Purdue, one of which, Endocyte Inc., was sold to Novartis in 2018.
Born in Ames, Iowa, in 1947, Low earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Brigham Young University in 1971 and a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of California, San Diego, in 1975. He joined the Purdue University faculty in 1976.
An AACR member since 2005, Low received the AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Chemistry in Cancer Research in 2015 in recognition of his research on low molecular weight ligand-targeted therapeutic and imaging agents. In the same year, he also received the American Chemical Society (ACS) George & Christine Sosnovsky Award for Cancer Research and was elected to the National Academy of Inventors. In August 2025, Low was named the recipient of the ACS Alfred Burger Award in Medicinal Chemistry for 2026. He also received the Order of the Griffin and the Morrill Award from Purdue.
He was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1998.
In Paril 2025, Purdue announced the creation of the Low Institute for Therapeutics (LIFT), funded by a gift from Low and his wife, Joan, longtime donors to the university. The institute is intended to address the gap between academic discoveries and early-stage clinical development.
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