William (Bill) Clark

Biography

William (Bill) Clark (1953-2017) received his PhD in the history of science in 1986.  In the 1990s and 2000s, he worked occasionally as a lecturer in the Department of History.  Bill was an extremely versatile scholar, with interests in the history of early modern and modern Germany, in the history of science, and in the history of universities and academic life.  On the latter topic, he published his magnum opus, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University, with the University of Chicago Press in 2006.  Books he co-edited include Little Tools of Knowledge: Historical Essays in Academic and Bureaucratic Practices (University of Michigan Press, 2001) and The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (University of Chicago Press, 1999).  He also published numerous articles, and, during his all-too-brief life, taught in Goettingen and Cambridge, as well as at UCSD and UCLA.

A full obituary and appreciation of his academic work may be found at https://hssonline.org/resources/publications/newsletter/july-2018/july-2018-in-memoriam/ where there is also a link to a bibliography of his works at https://hssonline.org/resources/publications/newsletter/april-2020-newsletter/bill-clark-or-the-ironic-analyst-of-homo-academicus/.