William J. Clench

Who was William J. Clench?

William James Clench was an American malacologist, professor at Harvard University and curator of the mollusk collection in the malacology department of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard.

Clench was born in Brooklyn, but was largely raised in Massachusetts. In 1913 he entered the Huntington School in Boston. While there he often engaged in bug collecting, and would show his collections to Charles Johnson at the Boston Society of Natural History. Johnson introduced Clench to such men as William F. Clapp, who was the curator of mollusks at the Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Clench received his undergraduate education at Michigan State College, graduating in 1921. He spent the summer studying mollusks on Sanibel Island and then began study at Harvard under William Morton Wheeler. He received his master's degree in entomology in 1923. He then went on to pursue his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, in mollusk study, with a Hinsdale Fellowship. In 1924 Clench married Julia Helmich, a resident of East Lansing, Michigan whom he had met while attending Michigan Agricultural College.