Clark, J. Kent

Biography

J. Kent Clark came to Caltech in 1947 as an instructor in English. He was born in 1917 in Utah, and educated at Brigham Young University and at Stanford. At Caltech he was one of a group of outstanding teachers of the humanities who began their tenure following World War II, at the end of the Millikan era. His renown on campus grew with the creation of a series of musicals on campus life and characters between 1954 and 1988, in collaboration with Elliott Davis. The musicals were performed by the Caltech Stock Company. A number of songs from these shows have achieved notoriety of their own. Clark also wrote musicals and plays for organizations other than Caltech. He is the author of a novel, The King's Agent, and biographies of Goodwin and Thomas Wharton (the Tom Wharton biography is still in progress). Clark's life and career are described in the oral history done for the Caltech Archives in 1990. He became Emeritus in 1986.