Hans Thacher Clarke

Hans Thacher Clarke (27 December 1887, Harrow, England - October 21 1972) was one of the world's leading biochemists.

His father, Joseph Thacher Clarke, was an archaeologist who was friendly with George Eastman of the Kodak company. At the onset of World War I Kodak had to begin making all the photographic chemicals they had previously imported from Germany, and this led to the appointment of Hans Clarke as the sole organic chemist with the Kodak company. He had previously undertaken a chemistry degree at University College, London, studying under Sir William Ramsay amongst others and graduating with a B. Sc. in 1908, and afterwards had obtained an 1851 Research Fellowship to study with Emil Fischer in Berlin.

Clarke stayed with Kodak until 1928, when he was invited to become the Professor of Biological Bhemistry in the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. His time at Kodak resulted in few publications in the chemical literature, but Clarke contributed the preparation of 26 substances to the Organic Syntheses series, and checked no fewer than 65 others. He stayed associated with Kodak for the rest of his life, only retiring as a consultant in 1969.

He was required to retire from Columbia at the mandatory age of 68 in 1956, but then moved to Yale University and spent eight years in full-time research. When Yale required the space he was occupying he moved again, and did another seven years' work at the Children's Cancer Relief Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts.

He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1942, and served on the boards of the Journal of the American Chemical Society and of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. He is probably best known for his work on the eponymously named Eschweiler-Clarke reaction.

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