John A. Clements was born in 1923. He went to undergraduate and medical school at Cornell University before joining the Army Chemical Center in Maryland. At the Army Chemical Center, Dr. Clements started studying lung physiology which lead him to discovering surfactant. Dr. Clements joined the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco in 1961 to continue his research and spent the rest of his career there. Dr. Clements was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has been awarded the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award, the Gairdner Foundation International Award, and the Pollin Prize for Pediatric Research, among others, for his discoveries. Dr. Clements sadly passed away in 2024.
John A. Clements
University of California San Francisco
Canada Gairdner Award Lasker Award National Academy of Sciences