John Clark was born in 1935 in
Lockhart, Texas. He received his BS and MA degrees in physics from the
University of Texas at Austin in 1955 and 1957, respectively. He then earned his Ph.D. in Physics under the supervision of
Eugene Feenberg at Washington University in St. Louis in 1959. He was a
National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at
Princeton University advised by
Eugene Wigner and a NATO postdoctoral fellow at
University of Birmingham and
Saclay from 1959 to 1963. He named his son Eugene after his advisors. Author is his daughter. He became an assistant professor of physics in
Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis in 1963, was department chair from 2002 to 2007, and succeeded
Edwin T. Jaynes as the Wayman Crow Professor of Physics. == Research and teaching ==