Honoring Jon Clardy’s election to the National Academy of Sciences

In May 2026, Prof. Jon Clardy, the Christopher T. Walsh Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). This recognition highlights Jon’s extensive scientific career that has significantly impacted the fields of natural products chemistry, chemical biology, and chemical ecology. Membership in the NAS is a significant honor and is granted in recognition of a scientist’s distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Jon is a familiar figure to the ASP community, having been honored as an ASP Fellow in 2003 and serving as President in 2004. Through his career, Jon has shown remarkable creativity, leadership, and curiosity, advancing our understanding of biologically active molecules and inspiring numerous trainees, many of whom have gone on to run their own interdisciplinary research programs. Since Jon Clardy began his independent career at Iowa State University in 1969, he has been at the forefront of natural products research, adapting his program as the field has evolved. Early in his independent career at Iowa State and subsequently at Cornell University, Jon became known for pioneering studies on the structural elucidation of natural products, particularly through X-ray crystallography. He did not focus on a single environmental niche, but rather, he was the person many in the field turned to for assistance when struggling with a difficult structure. In this way, Jon played a pivotal role in elucidating some of the most structurally complex natural products, including strictamine [1], brevetoxins [2,3], bryostatins [4], saxitoxin [5], and okadaic acid [6] at a time when elucidating structures was exceedingly difficult. The impact of this research goes well beyond natural products chemistry, as the molecules he elucidated have fascinated both medicinal and synthetic chemists for generations! Another defining theme of Jon’s career has been his ability to continually bridge chemistry and biology. After many years of determining the structure of natural products, Jon expanded his crystallography interests from small molecules to proteins, solving the structures of biologically important natural products bound to their protein targets. Together with his good friend-and fellow Washington sports teams fan-Stuart Schreiber, Jon solved the crystal structures of the immunosuppressant drug FK506 (tacrolimus) bound to FKBP (FK506 Binding Protein) [7], followed by the rapamycin/FKBP complex, and finally the ternary complex FKBP12/rapamycin/FRAP, showing for the first time how the natural product rapamycin could act as a “molecular glue” to dimerize the two proteins and thereby inactivate FRAP (FKBP-Rapamycin Associated Protein) [8]. While at Cornell, a friendship between Jon and his colleague Jerry Meinwald promoted yet another fruitful collaboration that led Jon to lead the Costa Rican International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG). Jon initially collaborated with Jerry, who started the ICBG in 1993, but he took the lead in 2003 after moving to Harvard Medical School. The ICBG program focused on investigating the potential of natural products from underexplored microorganisms and plants, including endophytic fungi, marine bacteria, myxobacteria, and plants used in traditional medicines. Through this project, his group pioneered environmental DNA techniques in collaboration with Jo Handelsman (University of Wisconsin-Madison), enabling access to the biosynthetic pathways of microbes that could not be easily grown in laboratory culture [9,10]. At a time when rediscovery rates had become a significant challenge to the field, his research emphasized the importance of exploring under investigated microbial systems and uncultured microorganisms to discover novel natural products.

At the heart of Jon’s success in research has been the many wonderful collaborators he has worked with throughout the nearly 57 years of his independent career. Jon is well known for building productive partnerships with diverse scientists across many institutions, disciplines, and borders. Aside from the ones already mentioned, Jon has formed fruitful collaborations with Richard Moore, John Faulkner, Bill Fenical, Roberto Kolter, Paul Scheuer, Christopher Walsh, Michael Fischbach, Chris Ireland, Guy Carter, and many others, which have led to many of his most influential discoveries. These collaborations often provided complementary expertise, enabling many of his group's most pivotal scientific discoveries. Beyond his remarkable research accomplishments, Jon Clardy’s election to the NAS also celebrates his exceptional record as a mentor and teacher. In the classroom, Jon has been a beloved instructor. Students particularly appreciated his dry humor and his ability to make even the most complex topics (e.g., cell signaling) clear and logical. The courses he taught at Cornell and at Harvard received top ratings. In the laboratory, Jon has trained numerous graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and young scientists throughout his career, many of whom have gone on to lead their own research programs. He has a unique mentoring style that prioritizes the individual trainee over the needs of his research group. He valued our opinions, allowing us to pursue the scientific questions that interested us most, and thus really supported us in developing our own research ideas. Personally, we owe our successes, in part, to the way Jon cultivated young, impressionable researchers to tackle ambitious questions using interdisciplinary approaches. However, his mentorship went beyond both the classroom and the research laboratory. He is known for regularly interacting with trainees at our annual meetings, even initiating a mentoring program involving ASP fellows.