Clark has spent nearly his entire academic and professional life at Harvard.
In 1967, after his freshman spring, he left Harvard College to serve as a missionary in Germany for two years.
After earning a masters degree and a doctorate from Harvard, he earned an appointment to the HBS faculty in 1978.
In the 1980s, he co-wrote several economics papers with Summers while the two were young professors.
Summers, praising his long-time colleague—and former graduate-school study partner—said yesterday, “His decade at the Harvard Business School has been a decade of great change and great strengthening for a great institution.”
Summers said yesterday he is “confident” that an acting dean will be in place at HBS when Clark departs at the end of next month.
—Staff writer Adam Goldenberg can be reached at goldenb@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.