[1][2][3] Clerk, along with his academic contemporary Ebenezer Laing (1931–2015), was one of Ghana's earliest practitioners of botany as a scientific discipline, in addition to his pioneering role as a plant pathologist in West Africa.

[15][16] His paternal great-grandfather, Alexander Worthy Clerk (1820–1906), a Jamaican Moravian educator arrived in the Danish Protectorate of Christiansborg, now Osu, in Accra in 1843, as part of the original group of 24 West Indians employed by the Swiss-based Basel Evangelical Missionary Society.

[37][38] His uncle was Nathan Quao (1915–2005), a diplomat, educationist and public servant who doubled as a presidential advisor to several Heads of State of Ghana.

[39][40] Moreover, his first cousin was the economist and diplomat, Amon Nikoi (1930–2002), appointed the Governor of the Bank of Ghana from 1973 to 1977 and Finance minister from 1979 to 1981.

[43][44][45] G. C. Clerk was then awarded a postgraduate research fellowship at the University of London and the University of Bristol, and in 1963, earned a joint PhD-DIC in botany, with a sub-concentration in physiological mycology, from Imperial College London where he wrote his dissertation on asexual spores of parasitic fungi growing on the bodies of insects.

[4][15][43][44][45][46][47] His doctoral advisor was the British mycologist, Michael Francis Madelin (1931–2007), one of the world's earliest investigators of conidial fungi and slime moulds.

[47][48][49] The pioneer British plant pathologist, Ronald Karslake Starr Wood (1919 – 2017) also supervised his research in London.

[46][50] Prior to his postgraduate studies, Clerk taught biology at Prempeh College for about three years in the late 1950s and also served as an assistant housemaster there.

[47] He authored more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific publications including journal articles, abstracts, book chapters, textbooks as well as blueprints for international examination standards.

[1][47] He was a board director at the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission from 1996 to 1998 along with his academic colleague, Marian Ewurama Addy, the first Ghanaian woman professor of natural science.

[47][49][64][65] Clerk's funeral service was held at the Akuafo Hall Chapel on the campus of the University of Ghana, Legon, before his burial at the Osu Cemetery in Accra.