Andrew Clarke studied zoology and geology at Cambridge University, spending the summer of 1968 supporting geological fieldwork in Svalbard. After graduating from Cambridge University in 1970 he joined the British Antarctic Survey and spent the next 40 years working in South Georgia, the South Orkney Islands, the Antarctic Peninsula, and the Antarctic continent with the occasional return trip to Svalbard, and retired in 2010. His main ecological interests centre on how animals and plants relate to temperature. He has worked primarily with marine invertebrates and fish, but also on birds, mammals, and most recently dinosaurs. He has written over 180 scientific papers.