Clay grew up living in Emporia, Kansas and he was known as C. S. During grade school C.S was a flying model airplane designer, builder, and competitor.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, his doctoral dissertation under Professor Gibson Winas was entitled, “Field Strengths and Spectra of High Frequency Gas Discharges.” After completing the PhD in 1951, Clay taught for one year at the University of Wyoming, but then joined the Carter Oil Company Research Laboratory in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as a Research Physicist to develop new methods for geophysical exploration .
It led, years later, to a Navy sonar project for mapping the underside of the ice pack floating in the Arctic Ocean to determine if submarines could safely navigate beneath it.
Indeed, the patent refers to the sonar and radar "arts", respectively, anticipating — before digital computers — many techniques, such as “time reversal”, that continue to see widespread application and extensive research today.
As faculty members in the graduate program in Oceanography and Limnology, Clay and Professor John Magnuson developed methods for tracking aquatic organisms.
They conducted cruises off Cape Hatteras using acoustical techniques to study the distribution of organisms along the northern edge of the Gulf Stream front.
Clay also conducted a geophysical survey of the Extremely Low Frequency antenna array in northern Wisconsin that was used for communication with ships anywhere on Earth.