Alexander Adu Clerk

Alexander Adu Clerk was born in Cape Coast, Ghana in 1947. He had his early education at mission schools in Osu and Bekwai in the Greater Accra and Ashanti Regions respectively. After completing his secondary education at Achimota School, he studied medicine at the University of Ghana Medical School, graduating in 1975. He completed a residency in psychiatry at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine. For fellowship training in sleep medicine, he attended the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Between 1975 and 1978, Clerk was a medical officer at the Effia-Nkwantah Hospital, Sekondi in the Western Region of Ghana. Later, he became an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine. He was also appointed the Chief Director of the Mental Hygiene Clinic at the Loma Linda Veteran Administration Hospital from 1984 to 1989. Clerk was a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University and became the Director of the world’s first sleep clinic, the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine from 1990 to 1998 where he was responsible for clinical operations, sleep research and supervised training of other medical specialists. Over the course of his career, he has published numerous scientific articles, book chapters and abstracts pertaining to the science of sleep. He has done medical outreach work in the United States, Canada, la Côte d'Ivoire and his native Ghana. Alexander Clerk is a founding member and Western Region Director of the Ghana Physicians and Surgeons Foundation based in New York City to promote specialist training and professional development in medicine, and associated fields in Ghana. He is a member of the Fellowship Training Committee of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. He has been board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and by the American Board of Sleep Medicine. He is the current Director of Sleep Medicine Services at O'Connor Health Center based in San Jose, California.

Alexander A. Clerk is a member of the historically significant Clerk family of Accra, Ghana. He is a fourth generation descendant of Alexander Worthy Clerk, a Jamaican Moravian missionary arrived in the Danish Protectorate of Christiansborg (now the suburb of Osu) in Accra in the Gold Coast in 1843, as part of the original group of 24 West Indian missionaries who worked under the auspices of the Basel Evangelical Missionary Society of Basel, Switzerland. A.W. Clerk was a pioneer of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana and a leader in education in colonial Ghana, establishing a boarding middle school in Osu, The Salem School in 1843. His paternal great-grandmother, Pauline Hesse was from the Gold Coast, and was of German and Ga-Dangme heritage. His granduncle was Nicholas Timothy Clerk (1862 -1961), a Basel-trained theologian and missionary who was elected the first Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast from 1918 to 1932. N. T. Clerk was a founding father of the all boys’ boarding high school, Presbyterian Boys’ Secondary School established in 1938.

His uncle, Carl Henry Clerk (1895 -1982) was an editor, agricultural educator, school administrator, Presbyterian minister and journalist who was elected the fourth Synod Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Gold Coast from 1950 to 1954. Carl Clerk was also the Editor of the Christian Messenger, the news bulletin of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana from 1960 to 1963. Another uncle, Theodore S. Clerk (1909 -1965) was the first Ghanaian architect of the Gold Coast who planned and developed the port city of Temawhile his aunt, Matilda J. Clerk (1916 -1984) was the second Ghanaian woman to become a physician.

His second cousin, Nicholas T. Clerk (1930 - 2012) served as the Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), the Vice-Chairman of the Public Services Commission of Ghana and the Chairman of the Public Services Commission of Uganda from 1989 to 1990. Furthermore, his other cousin, the younger brother of Nicholas T. Clerk, is the Ghanaian botanist, George C. Clerk (born 1931).

A. A. Clerk is married with three children.

• Guilleminault, C., Clerk, A., Black, J et al (1995) "Nondrug Treatment Trials in Psychophysiologic Insomnia". Archives of Internal Medicine. 155 (8)
• Newman, J. P.; Clerk, A. A.; Moore, M.; Utley, D. S.; Terris, D. J. (1996). "Recognition and Surgical Management of the Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome". The Laryngoscope. 106 (9): 1089–1093
• Terris, D. J.; Clerk, A. A.; Norbash, A. M.; Troell, R. J. (1996). "Characterization of postoperative edema following laser-assisted uvulopalatoplasty using MRI and polysomnography: implications for the outpatient treatment of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome." The Laryngoscope. 106 (2 Pt 1): 124–128
• Utley, D. S.; Shin, E. J.; Clerk, A. A.; Terris, D. J. (1997). "A Cost-Effective and Rational Surgical Approach to Patients With Snoring, Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome, or Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome". The Laryngoscope. 107 (6): 726–734