Roy Elwood Clausen

Roy Elwood Clausen (August 21, 1891, Randall, Iowa – August 21, 1956, Berkeley, California) was an American biochemist, botanist, plant geneticist, and drosophilist.

Biography Clausen was the eldest of six siblings. As a boy with his family, he moved from Iowa to Newkirk, Oklahoma, in 1900. In 1910, he graduated with a bachelor of science degree in agriculture from Stillwater's Oklahoma A&M (later renamed Oklahoma State University). In 1910, Clausen matriculated at the University of California, Berkeley. There, Clausen graduated in 1912 with a second bachelor's degree, in agriculture, with a major in plant pathology. He graduated in 1914 with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, with a minor in plant pathology. From 1914 until his death in 1956, Clausen was a faculty member at UC Berkeley. During World War I, he was on an eighteen-month leave of absence when he served in the U.S. Army as a supply officer in a depot brigade. During World War II, he was on another leave of absence when he served in 1944 and 1945 as a personnel officer at the Los Alamos Laboratory. After 1934, Clausen collaborated extensively with Donald Ross Cameron (1907–1984).

With Ernest B. Babcock, Clausen wrote Genetics in Relation to Agriculture (1918), with a second edition in 1927. After his return from Los Alamos, he served as the chair of UC Berkeley's department of genetics.

Clausen was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1951. He was the president of the Genetics Society of America in 1953.

He married Mae Winifred Falls in 1916. He died from a heart attack in 1956, and his widow died in 1959.

Selected publications Babcock, Ernest Brown & Clausen, Roy Elwood (1918), Genetics in Relation to Agriculture, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.