Peter G. Schultz did his undergraduate and graduate work at the California Institute of Technology. His thesis work with Peter Dervan resulted in the first synthetic molecules (polypyrrole amides) that sequence-selectively cleave DNA. In 1985, after postdoctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Chris Walsh, he joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley, where he was Professor of Chemistry, Principal Investigator at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Schultz joined the faculty of Scripps in 1999 where he is currently the Scripps Family Professor of Chemistry. He founded and was the Institute Director of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) in San Diego, CA from 1999 to 2010 and more recently (2012) the California Institute for Biomedical Research (CALIBR), a not-for-profit institute focused on early stage translational research. In addition, Schultz is a founder of Affymax Research Institute, Syrrx, Kalypsys, Phenomix, Symyx Therapeutics, Ilypsa, Ambrx, Ardelyx, and Wildcat Technologies, pioneers in the application of diversity based approaches to problems in chemistry, materials science and medicine.

His awards include the Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation, membership in the National Academy of Sciences and National Institute of Medicine, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the Paul Ehrlich Prize, the Arthur C. Cope Award of the American Chemical Society, and the Solvay Prize. He has coauthored 500 scientific publications and trained over 300+ graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, many of whom are on the faculties of major research institutions around the world.