He won a Carnegie Scholarship to work under the supervision of Bill Hunter, John R. Helliwell and David Garner[13][14] at the University of Manchester where he received his PhD in 1992[15] for research into the chemical structure of Concanavalin A and Zinc aldolase.

Following his PhD, Naismith did postdoctoral research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center as a NATO Fellow in the laboratory of Stephen Sprang.

[20] Naismith joined the University of Oxford in 2017 as Professor of Structural Biology in the Nuffield Department of Medicine and Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College.

His nomination reads: Naismith is cited for his stunning structural and chemical dissection of the many proteins involved in natural product recognition, synthesis and export.

His work has revealed new paradigms in the recognition of nucleic acids and carbohydrates, unveiled novel chemical mechanisms for enzymatic nucleophilic substitution and addition and provided the first views, both structural and dynamic, of polysaccharide export systems in bacteria.

He recognised the emerging problem of antibiotic resistance and has devoted his scientific career to the development of new therapeutic compounds and the identification of novel targets specific to microbial pathogens.