The UCMP is excited to announce the establishment of the William A. Clemens Memorial Fund in Vertebrate Paleontology. It was made possible by generous donors in the UCMP community who care deeply about the museum, its future, and its educational and scientific missions. The annual disbursement from this fund will be used to support UCMP’s vertebrate paleontology collections, including the maintenance and curation of fossils, staffing, and its use by students and visiting scholars.
This fund honors the life and work of Bill Clemens, whose groundbreaking research helped shape our current understanding of the history of life on Earth and whose generosity had an enormous impact on generations of students. He was a tremendous scholar, mentor, and friend.
Bill’s career spanned 60 years at Berkeley. A life-long Berkeleyan, he received his undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley in 1954 and completed graduate studies in 1960. After a brief stint at the University of Kansas, Bill returned to UC Berkeley. He became Full Professor in 1971 and served as the Director of the Museum of Paleontology from 1987 to 1989. He continued as Professor Emeritus after his retirement up until his passing in November of 2020.
To learn more about Bill and his work, we refer you to the Bill Clemens Oral History Project republished with permission by Paul Burnett of UC Berkeley’s Oral History Center. This thoughtful and wonderfully written piece documents Bill’s legacy and includes short video interviews with Bill and several of his graduate students.
Additional information below: