Sean Decatur, Ph.D.

Sean Decatur is a chemist, Cottrell Scholar, and President of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, one of the world’s preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. Since joining the Museum in April 2023, he has presided over the opening of the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation; has prioritized the Museum’s work to address its challenging historical legacy, collecting practices, and cultural representation; accelerated efforts to digitize and expand access to the Museum’s collection; and has become a spokesperson for the ways museums can redress past practices, include more diverse perspectives, and serve broader audiences as civic and educational institutions.

Previously, Decatur served as the 19th president of Kenyon College. Under his leadership, Kenyon attracted its most diverse and academically talented incoming classes in history and achieved significant gains in resources for financial aid, the breadth and distinction of the faculty, enhancements to the campus, and record enrollments despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prior to joining Kenyon College, Decatur was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Oberlin College, where he was also professor of chemistry and biochemistry. Previously, he was professor at Mount Holyoke College, where he helped establish a top research program in biophysical chemistry, and a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Decatur is a 1996 Cottrell Scholar and has won research grants from the federal National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health and from private foundations including the Alzheimer’s Association and Dreyfus Foundation. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and has received a number of national awards for his scholarship, including a National Science Foundation CAREER award in 1999 and a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 2003. He was named an Emerging Scholar of 2007 by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education magazine. Decatur was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2017 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.

He serves on the Board of Managers of Swarthmore College, on the Board of Trustees of Bank Street College of Education, and on the board of directors of the Joyce Foundation and New York City Tourism + Conventions. He has served on numerous advisory boards, including the Board on Life Sciences at the National Academy of Sciences, as chair of the Advisory Committee for the Center for the Advancement of Science Leadership and Culture at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and as chairman of the Codon Learning scientific advisory board. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Decatur attended the Hawken School before earning his bachelor’s degree at Swarthmore College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1990. He earned a doctorate in biophysical chemistry at Stanford University in 1995; his dissertation was titled “Novel Approaches to Probing Structure-Function Relationships in Myoglobin.”