Tom W. Muir received his B.Sc in Chemistry from the University of Edinburgh in 1989 and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the same institute in 1993 under the direction of the late Professor Robert Ramage, FRS. Following postdoc studies with Stephen B.H. Kent at The Scripps Research Institute, Muir joined the faculty of The Rockefeller University in 1996, where he rose through the ranks eventually being appointed the Richard E. Salomon Family Professor and Director of the Pels Center of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Structural Biology. In 2011, Dr. Muir joined the faculty of Princeton University as the Van Zandt Williams Jr. Class of '65 Professor of Chemistry, serving as Chair of the Chemistry Department from 2015-2020.

A chemical biologist, Muir has made many contributions to the fields of peptide and protein chemistry. He is best known for developing general methods for the preparation of proteins containing unnatural amino acids, posttranslational modifications (PTMs) and isotopic probes. These chemical tools, now widely employed in academia and industry, have yielded detailed functional insights in many systems including protein kinases, ion channels and chromatin. His currents interests lie principally in the area of epigenetics, where he is interested in how changes to chromatin structure drive different cellular phenotypes.