He was educated at Jarrow Central School and subsequently became apprenticed in pharmacy at the dispensary of the Newcastle General Hospital from 1935 to 1938.

[1] Clarke completed his postgraduate posts at Oxford with Sir Hugh Cairns and E. M. Buzzard, and in the Royal Army Medical Corps for a further two years with a specialism in neurology (1946 to 1948).

[1] In 1958, Clarke switched career, left clinical work and became assistant scientific secretary to the Wellcome Trust.

[1] In 1965, he represented the History of Medicine Society on the committee who established the British Society for the History of Medicine, along with William Copeman, Haldane Philp Tait, K. D. Keele, D. Geraint James, Douglas Guthrie, F. N. L. Poynter and Charles Newman, becoming its first honorary assissistant secretary.

[1] Clarke researched the structure, functions and diseases of the nervous system[1] and with various co-authors, he created a series of monographs on the history of the neurosciences.