Sam Gellman is the Ralph F. Hirschmann Professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He earned his A.B. from Harvard University in 1981 and his Ph.D. from Columbia University, under Ronald Breslow, in 1986. After an NIH post-doctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology, with Peter Dervan, Gellman joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1987.

The work from Gellman's laboratory has been recognized by the Ralph F. Hirschmann Award in Peptide Chemistry from the American Chemical Society in 2007, the Vincent du Vigneaud Award from the American Peptide Society in 2006 and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society in 1997.

Gellman was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2010. He has served on the National Institutes of Health Medicinal Chemistry Study Section, 1999-2002, and several editorial advisory boards, such as the Journal of Organic Chemistry, the European Journal of Organic Chemistry, Biopolymers-Peptide Science, Chemical Society Reviews and Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry. Major interests in Gellman's research program have included fundamental studies of non-covalent interactions, elucidation of the origins of peptide and protein folding preferences, development and application of unnatural oligomers that display protein-like conformational behavior, "foldamers," creation of new amphiphiles for membrane protein manipulation, and development of new biologically active polymers.