Douglas C. Rees

Douglas Charles "Doug" Rees (born 1952) is an American biochemist, biophysicist, and structural biologist.

Rees graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in 1974 and received a PhD in biophysics from Harvard University in 1980. In 1982 he went to the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1989, he became a professor of chemistry at Caltech. There he is Roscoe Gilkey Dickinson Professor and Dean of graduate studies. From 1997 onwards, he has been an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He served as the editor or co-editor of the Annual Review of Biophysics and Biomolecular Structure (2004–2014).

He examines the structure and function of metal-containing proteins, especially nitrogenase in biological nitrogen fixation, and membrane proteins that carry out ATP-dependent transport through membranes (e.g. ABC transporters). To do this, his group uses X-ray crystallography. His interest in nitrogenase began in William Lipscomb's laboratory.

In 2015 he received the FA Cotton Medal, and in 2020 he was awarded the Gregori Aminoff Prize. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, and was a Sloan Research Fellow.