Eugenie Clark

Dr. Eugenie Clark is a world-renowned ichthyologist and authority on sharks who is popularly known as the SHARK LADY. Born in New York City (1922), of Japanese descent, Eugenie was swimming before she was two and throughout her childhood her interest in sea creatures grew. By the 1940's she was well on her way to a groundbreaking career, despite the hostilities toward the Japanese and prevalent sexism during WWII. Among her many discoveries, Clark was the first person to develop a technique for making "test-tube" babies in female fish. She went on to become a world-famous scientist and pioneer in the field of scuba diving for research purposes.

She was a research assistant at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at the New York Zoological Society, and at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. She was the founding director (1955 to 1967) of the Cape Haze Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, now a leading center for shark research called the Mote Marine Laboratory with which she is still affiliated. Her studies on the intelligence and behaviour of sharks at this point earned her the nickname "Shark Lady".

Dr. Clark is the recipient of three honorary D.Sc. degrees and awards from the National Geographic Society, the Explorers Club, the Underwater Society of America, the American Littoral Society, the Gold Medal Award of the Society of Women Geographers, and the President's Medal of the University of Maryland. She has authored three books and over 160 scientific and popular articles.

She has conducted 71 deep submersible dives. Her latest research projects concern the behaviour of tropical sand fishes and deep-sea sharks. These studies have been featured in 12 articles she has written for National Geographic magazine.