Clement C. Clay was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1905. He graduated from Columbia University in 1927 and from McGill's Faculty of Medicine in 1932. During World War II, he served as a Lieutenant and later Commander in the medical corps of the United States Naval Reserve. In 1941, he was put on active duty and in 1942 worked at a U. S. Naval Hospital in Pensacola, Florida. In 1943 and 1944, he was sent by the Surgeon General to North Africa, Italy, and England on a special mission to study the handling of casualties and gather other information on military medical service in these countries. In 1944 he was able to study infection control measures during an outbreak of typhus in Naples. He retired from the Navy in 1946. He worked as a hospital administrator and Professor of Hospital Administration at the Columbia University School of Public Health from 1954 to 1970. He died in 1978.