Jon Clardy

Jon Clardy (born May 16, 1943, Washington, D.C., United States) is currently the Hsien Wu and Daisy Yen Wu professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on the isolation and structural characterization of natural products, and currently investigates the role of biologically active small molecules in mediating symbiotic interactions and disease.

Clardy grew up in Arlington, Virginia, United States, the oldest of four children. He attended Yale University where he received a B.S. in 1964 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. While he was always captivated by biology, during college he became more interested in chemistry. He performed undergraduate research in organic synthesis, with an emphasis on benzyne. After graduating from Yale, he moved to Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1969. He then accepted a faculty position in the Chemistry Department at Iowa State University, where he was affiliated with the Ames Laboratory. In 1978, he moved to the Chemistry Department at Cornell University where he stayed until 2002, when he moved to the Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology Department at Harvard Medical School. In 2004, he started the Ph.D. Program in Chemical Biology with Stuart Schreiber and Greg Verdine. He also created, and continues to teach, a popular class entitled “Molecules of Life” for Harvard undergraduates who are not majoring in sciences.

While pursuing his Ph.D., Clardy met his wife Andrea Fleck, a Swarthmore College graduate, who is a writer. Her works include a children’s book, two books about upstate New York, and plays that have been performed across the country. They have two sons.

Clardy’s early research focused on the structure elucidation of natural products primarily by X-ray crystallography. Early on at Iowa State University Clardy established important collaborations with Bill Fenical, John Faulkner and Paul Scheuer, which led to the structure elucidation of numerous marine natural products such as the anticancer agent bryostatin, the insecticidal and antifungal jaspamide, diazonamide A and B, and many others. Some of his most notable early work focused on the neurotoxins associated with “red tide” – which led to the determination of the three dimensional structures of saxitoxin, of the gonyautoxin group, and the cyclic polyether brevetoxin B. Upon moving to Cornell University, Clardy’s research expanded to include a huge variety of non-marine organisms including, but not limited to, fungi, Actinobacteria and C. elegans. His longstanding interest in endophytic fungi led to the discovery of the selectively cytotoxic quinone torreyanic acid, the structurally diverse guanacastepenes, the antimycotic agent cryptocin, and many others.

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