John Drury Clark

John Drury Clark, Ph.D. (August 15, 1907 – July 6, 1988) was an American rocket fuel developer, chemist, and science fiction writer.

He was instrumental in the revival of interest in Robert E. Howard's Conan stories and influenced the writing careers of L. Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt, and other authors.

Clark was born in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Clark's papers, consisting of four cubic feet of correspondence, drafts of scientific and science fiction publications, notes, an unpublished typescript memoir, diaries (1923–1984), clippings, and photos, are preserved in the Special Collections at Virginia Tech as part of the repository's Archives of American Aerospace Exploration.

As a fan of the science fiction and fantasy magazines of the pulp era, Clark became friendly with several figures who were or would become authors in both fields, including P. Schuyler Miller, Fletcher Pratt, and L. Ron Hubbard.

He attended the University of Alaska, and then the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena, California from 1927 to 1930, graduating with a B.S. in Physical Chemistry.

During his last two years at Caltech his college roommate was future science fiction author L. Sprague de Camp.

Clark moved to Schenectady in Upstate New York in the early 1930s, taking a job with General Electric.

A few years later he moved to New York City.

He met Miller while living in Schenectady in the 1930s, and made the acquaintance of Pratt after moving to New York City.

He later introduced de Camp to Miller, Pratt, and the informal circle of aspirant New York science fiction writers that included Otto Binder, John W. Campbell, Edmond Hamilton, Otis Adelbert Kline, Henry Kuttner, Frank Belknap Long, Manly Wade Wellman, and Jack Williamson.

Clark first encountered Robert E. Howard's fantasies of Kull, Conan and Solomon Kane in the magazine Weird Tales.

While unemployed in the mid-1930s Clark wrote a couple of science fiction stories, "Minus Planet" and "Space Blister", with plotting assistance from L. Sprague de Camp, which were published in Astounding Stories in 1937.

"Minus Planet" was the first science fiction story to deal with antimatter.

In 1933 Clark published a novel spiral chart of the periodic system of the chemical elements.

He received an M.S. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and, in 1934, a PhD from Stanford University.

He became an avid fan, and together with Miller he worked out an outline of Conan's career and a map of the world in Howard's invented Hyborian Age in early 1936 from the then-published stories.

Miller sent this material to Howard, whose reply confirmed and corrected their findings.

Their map became the basis of those that later appeared in the book editions of the Conan stories.

Their revised outline, "A Probable Outline of Conan's Career" was published in the fanzine The Hyborian Age in 1938.

He was living in Philadelphia and working as a research chemist for John Wyeth & Brother of that city in 1943.

On June 7 of that year he married operatic soprano singer Mildred Baldwin.

Their marriage later ended in divorce.

This design was used by Life Magazine for a striking and influential illustration as part of a special number on the elements, 16 May 1949.

From 1949 to his retirement in 1970, Clark developed liquid propellants at the Naval Air Rocket Test Station at Dover, New Jersey (known as the Liquid Rocket Propulsion Laboratory of Picatinny Arsenal after 1960).

His title there was chief chemist.

Clark came up with a new version in 1950, but this did not have the same success.

Thus established as an authority on Conan, Clark was invited to edit and provide introductions for the first book editions of Howard's Conan stories, published by Gnome Press in the 1950s.

It inspired the artist Edgar Longman, whose mural was a prominent exhibit in the Festival of Britain science exhibition, London, 1951.

Expanded versions of his and Miller's essay on Conan, retitled "An Informal Biography of Conan the Cimmerian", appeared in the Gnome volume The Coming of Conan in 1953 and (revised by de Camp) in the fanzine Amra, vol. 2, no. 4, in 1959.

It was the source of the linking passages between the individual Conan stories in both the Gnome editions and the Lancer paperback editions of the 1960s.

Clark and Miller's Hyborian Age map, together with Howard's own original, are the basis of those published in the Gnome, Lancer, and later editions of the stories.

In 1962 he married artist Inga Pratt, widow of Fletcher Pratt.

Clark was the author of ''Ignition!

An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants'' (Rutgers University Press, 1972) which he dedicated to his wife Inga.

The book was based on his experiences in the field and chronicled the development of liquid rocket propellant technology, through technical explanations of the work the propellant community produced as well as often humorous anecdotes and incidents about the people involved.

The Rutgers University Press began republishing ''Ignition!

He died on July 6, 1988, after a long illness and series of strokes at St. Clare's Hospital in Denville, New Jersey, near his home.

An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants'' in May 2018.

During the Clarks' married life they lived in an "unconventional" house in Newfoundland, in the Green Pond section of Rockaway Township, Morris County, New Jersey, where Clark continued to reside in his later years, until his death.