Chemist Jin-Quan Yu of Scripps Research elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Honor is bestowed for compelling achievements in academia, business, government and public affairs

April 17, 2019

LA JOLLA, CA – The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the world’s most prestigious honor societies, has named Scripps Research chemist Jin-Quan Yu, PhD, as an elected member of its 2019 class.

Academy members are world leaders in the arts and sciences, business, philanthropy and public affairs. The society, which also functions as an independent research center, emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary study that draws on expertise from many fields of research and professional practice to address significant challenges.

“The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is a very special organization with a long history of working across disciplines to advance the common good,” says James Williamson, PhD, executive vice president of research and academic affairs at Scripps Research. “Jin's election to the Academy as a scientist reflects a special distinction of achievement that is recognized well beyond our immediate scientific circles.”

Yu, the Frank and Bertha Hupp Professor of Chemistry at Scripps Research, is known globally for his groundbreaking work in the field of organic synthetic chemistry, having developed new strategies and tools for making molecules used for medicine and other applications. Notably, he pioneered many of the first practical and robust carbon-hydrogen (C–H) bond-activation reactions now used in nearly every sector of chemical science. He is credited with breaking down barriers to the development of versatile compounds with enormous benefits to academic, industrial and pharmaceutical research.

“We are immensely pleased and proud that Jin is being rightly recognized with this prestigious honor,” says Donna Blackmond, PhD, co-chair of the chemistry department at Scripps Research. “Jin is one of the treasures of our department, bringing high energy, brilliance, creativity and single-minded dedication to his work. His impact in the community of asymmetric C-H functionalization research and resulting pharmaceutical applications is unparalleled.”

Yu earned his doctorate in chemistry from University of Cambridge (UK) in 1999 and joined Scripps Research faculty in 2007 after an appointment at Brandeis University and a Royal Society fellowship at the University of Cambridge. In 2016, he received a MacArthur Fellowship, also known as a “genius grant,” and was earlier named as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Society of Chemistry, among many other honors and awards.

Yu joins 20 other Scripps Research faculty who have been named as members to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

“One of the reasons to honor extraordinary achievement is because the pursuit of excellence is so often accompanied by disappointment and self-doubt,” says David W. Oxtoby, president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. “We are pleased to recognize the excellence of our new members, celebrate their compelling accomplishments, and invite them to join the Academy and contribute to its work.”

Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Academy has elected more than 13,500 members since its founding in 1780 by John Adams, John Hancock and others who believed the new republic should honor exceptionally accomplished individuals and engage them in advancing the public good. The Academy’s dual mission remains essentially the same 239 years later with honorees from increasingly diverse fields and with the work focused on the arts, democracy, education, global affairs and science.

The new class will be inducted at a ceremony in October 2019 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and join the company of Academy members elected before them, including Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Maria Mitchell, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Margaret Mead, Milton Friedman and Martin Luther King, Jr.

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