Houk, professor of chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, started off studying chemical reactions in the test tube but soon found himself intrigued by computers and their potential to explain mathematically what laboratory experiments couldn't. That was more than 30 years ago.
"Computer modeling is important because we can so closely connect it to experiments in two ways," he said. "First, it can help explain why experimental results come out the way they do, particularly if there's some result we don't understand.
"And second, with computers we can predict what reactions will be successful," he continued. "It's becoming more and more important to use computer technology to figure out how new drugs work, or why drug candidates don't work."
One of his projects involved a simple protein building block called proline. For 30 years scientists couldn't explain how it helped assemble a wide variety of useful molecules such as pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals.
Using computers, Houk and his research team spent several months simulating proline-prompted reactions a tiny fraction of a second at a time, studying the three-dimensional orchestration of atoms as they broke apart, rotated and clung to each other in transient structures unseen by laboratory methods. He also predicted other proline reactions as yet unstudied -- and these were later closely matched by experimental results.
Houk, who described himself as "a Sputnik-inspired kid," received his undergraduate degree and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1964 and 1968. He is a member of the ACS divisions of organic, computer and physical chemistry.
The ACS Award for Computers in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research is sponsored by Accelrys Inc.