R. Lee Clark

R. Lee Clark (July 2, 1906 – May 3, 1994) was a surgical oncologist and the first permanent director of MD Anderson Cancer Center.

[1] He was born into a family of educators, with both his father, Randolph Lee Clark, and grandfather having been college presidents and founders.

[1] After graduating Wichita Falls High School,[3] his undergraduate studies were at the University of South Carolina, with dual degrees in chemical engineering and pre-med.

In 1944 he became chief of the Experimental Surgical Unit at Wright Patterson Field and Consultant to the Air Surgeon General.

In 1946 after a politically contentious and prolonged recruitment process Clark was appointed director and surgeon-in-chief at MD Anderson Cancer Center.

The selection process was snafued and prolonged because Regent D. Frank Strickland filibustered for his own candidate for the permanent job.

[12] The center had been founded five years earlier; development was limited due to wartime induced expenses and shortages in building supplies.

[10] At the time Clark came on board, there were 22 employees; the cancer hospital was housed on the old rat infested[13] six acre Houston estate of Capt.

[1] When offered the position he wrote back on Randolph Fields stationary:The three chief aims of the project are the education, treatment, and research activities relative to the disease of cancer.

Although they lost the race to be the first users of this technology, these pioneering efforts have been recognized to have made a leading contribution to the development of radiotherapy.

[7] Clark married Bertha Margaret Davis, MD,[29] an anesthesiologist from Asheville, North Carolina, on June 11, 1932.