David Clark was born June 1952 in Croydon, a London suburb. After winning a scholarship to Christ's College, Cambridge, he received his B.A. in 1973. In 1977 got his PhD from Bristol University for work on antibiotic resistance. He then left England for postdoctoral research at Yale and then the University of Illinois. He joined the faculty of Southern Illinois University in 1981 and is now a professor in the Microbiology Department. In 1991 he visited Sheffield University, England as a Royal Society Guest Research Fellow. His research into the genetics and regulation of bacterial fermentation has been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy from 1982 till 2007. He has published over 70 articles in scientific journals and graduated over 20 master's and PhD students. He is unmarried and lives with two cats, Little George, who is orange and Ralph who is mostly black and eats cardboard. He is the author of Molecular Biology Made Simple and Fun, now in its third edition, as well as three more serious textbooks.