Austin Hobart Clark

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Austin Hobart Clark (December 17, 1880 – October 28, 1954) is an American zoologist. He was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts and died in Washington, D.C. His research covered a wide range of topics including oceanography, marine biology, ornithology, and entomology.

The son of Theodore Minot Clark and Jeannette Clark of France, Clark obtained his Bachelor of Arts at Harvard University in 1903. He had five children with his first wife Mary Wendell Upham, who he married on March 6, 1906. Mary died in December 1931 and Clark remarried in 1933 to Leila Gay Forbes.

In 1901, Clark organized a scientific expedition to Isla Margarita in Venezuela. From 1903 to 1905, he conducted research in the Antilles. From 1906 to 1907, he led a scientific team aboard the 1882 USS Albatross. In 1908, he took a post at the National Museum of Natural History, which he held until his retirement in 1950.

Clark had important and various roles in a number of learned societies: to name a few, he was president of the Entomological Society of Washington, vice president of the American Geophysical Union, and directed the press service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Clark was author to more than 600 publications written in English, French, Italian, German, and Russian. Some of the most well-known include Animals of Land and Sea (1925), Nature Narratives (two volumes, 1929 and 1931), The New Evolution (1930), and Animals Alive (1948).