After qualification he immediately joined the
Royal Army Medical Corps as a medical officer and was sent to France early in 1918. He caught
diphtheria and was sent back to England to recover, following which he spent the remainder of the war as a medical officer at '‘No. 8 Stationary Hospital'’ at
Wimereux in northern France. Following a period in the Department of Anatomy at
St Thomas' Hospital Medical School he was appointed as Principal Medical Officer to the
Sarawak Government. He was subsequently appointed as Professor of Anatomy at
St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School, followed by a period as Professor of Anatomy at
St Thomas' Hospital Medical School and finally, in 1934, he was invited to take over as the
Dr. Lee's Professor of Anatomy (and effectively the Chair of the Anatomy Department) at the
University of Oxford. Le Gros Clark was also editor of the
Journal of Anatomy between 1938 and 1945. In 1953, Le Gros Clark was one of three men (the others being
Joseph Weiner and
Kenneth Oakley) who proved that the
Piltdown Man was a forgery. In 1960, Le Gros Clark was elected to the
American Philosophical Society. In 1963, He was elected to the
National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the Royal Society's
Royal Medal in 1961 and delivered their
Ferrier Lecture in 1956. He was elected President of the
Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland for 1951 to 1953. Papers relating to Le Gros Clark, his grandfather the surgeon
Frederick Le Gros Clark and his brother
Cyril Le Gros Clark (former Chief Secretary of
Sarawak, who was murdered by the Japanese in 1945 after a period of detention at
Batu Lintang camp in Borneo) are held at the
Bodleian Library (Special Collections and Western Manuscripts) at Oxford University. During his career Le Gros Clark published numerous papers on human evolution and palaeontology, and an autobiography. ==References==