William Clemens

1932 - 2020

William A. Clemens, Jr.

William A. Clemens died at home on November 17th 2020, taken quickly by cancer in this awful year of epidemic and fire. He was born in Berkeley on May 15, 1932, the son of Vincent and Estella Clemens. His education was thoroughly local, from Hillside to Berkeley High School and on to the University of California, where he transformed an interest in fossil-collecting on his grandparents' homestead in Wyoming into a career of teaching and scholarship. After time in the Army and his marriage to the late Dorothy Thelen Clemens, he received his doctorate in paleontology and his first two daughters. The new family then spent a post-doctoral year in London before Bill took up his first faculty position at the University of Kansas. In 1967, he returned to Berkeley as a member of the Department of Paleontology and, later, the Department of Integrative Biology.
In a field best known for its charismatic megafauna, Bill Clemens focused on smaller beasts. He specialized in the mammals of the Mesozoic and pursued questions of the origin, diversification, and distribution of species. While fieldwork might involve excavating the occasional Triceratops, his own research centered on careful analyses of fossil teeth and other small remnants of tiny creatures. His fieldwork ranged widely, from doctoral research in Wyoming on to New Mexico, Australia, the North Slope, Ethiopia, and above all to Eastern Montana where he worked in the fossil deposits of the Hell Creek Formation. His research career created opportunities for far-ranging family travels with years spent at University College London and Royal Holloway in Britain as well as in Munich and Bonn. Each of these trips and projects produced new colleagues and friends, who were always welcome as guests in Berkeley.
Bill was repeatedly recognized for both his scholarship and his service to the profession. He received fellowships from both the Guggenheim and Alexander von Humboldt Foundations as well as support from the National Science Foundation in many forms. He served as Director of the Museum of Paleontology at Berkeley, President of the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology, and as both trustee and President of the Board of the California Academy of Sciences.
He is survived by his four children – Catherine, Elisabeth, Diane, and William – and their spouses as well as by seven grandchildren. His life was enriched by the many students and grand-students who were part of field camps and conferences, foreign travel and family dinners. We plan to gather to celebrate his life once it is possible to gather together again. In lieu of flowers, donations in his honor may be made to the University of California Museum of Paleontology by way of https://give.berkeley.edu/fund/FU0961000 or by a check to the UC Regents "in honor of Bill Clemens, UCMP" sent to the University of California Museum of Paleontology, 1101 Valley Life Sciences Building, #4780, Berkeley, California 94720-4780. (Photo: UCMP)