David P. Clark

David P. Clark grew up in Croydon, a London suburb. He won a scholarship to Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. in natural sciences in 1973. In 1977 he received his Ph.D. from Bristol University, for working on antibiotic entry into Escherichia coli. He then left England to do postdoctoral research on the genetics of lipid metabolism in the laboratory of John Cronan, first at Yale University and then at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined the faculty of Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 1981. His research focuses on anaerobic fermentation in bacteria. He has published over 70 research articles and graduated over 20 masters and doctoral students. In 1989 he won the College of Science Outstanding Researcher Award. In 1991 he was the Royal Society Guest Research Fellow at the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Sheffield University, England. He has authored two books: Molecular Biology, Made Simple and Fun, now in its fourth edition, and Molecular Biology, Understanding the Genetic Revolution. He is unmarried and lives with two cats, Little George, who is orange and very nosey, and Mr. Ralph, who is mostly black and crunches cardboard.