John Clements, MD, whose scientific discoveries helped save millions of newborns around the world from respiratory distress syndrome and whose boundless appetite for learning helped create the interdisciplinary culture at UC San Francisco, has died at the age of 101.
The tremendous impact of Clements' work was recognized in 1994 when he won the Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award for the discovery of lung surfactant, a soapy substance that reduces surface tension, so the tiny air sacs can deflate without collapsing.
Clements realized this first theoretically, then experimentally. Over a span of three decades, he and his colleagues at UCSF developed an artificial surfactant that led to the version that is still used today to keep premature infants alive.
