Sir Dugald Clerk (sometimes written as Dugald Clark) KBE, LLD FRS (1854, Glasgow – 1932, Ewhurst, Surrey) was a Scottish engineer who designed the world's first successful two-stroke engine in 1878 and patented it in England in 1881. He was a graduate of Anderson's University in Glasgow (now the University of Strathclyde), and Yorkshire College, Leeds (now the University of Leeds). He formed the intellectual property firm with George Croydon Marks, called Marks & Clerk. He was knighted on 24 August 1917.
Life
Dugald Clerk was born in Glasgow on 31 March 1854, the son of Donald Clerk a machinist and his wife, Martha Symington. He was privately tutored then apprenticed to the firm of Messrs H O Robinson & Co in Glasgow. From 1871 to 1876 he went to Anderson College in Glasgow studying engineering then to the Yorkshire College of Science in Leeds. In the First World War he was Director of Engineering Research for the Admiralty.
He married Margaret Hanney in 1883.
He died in Ewhurst, Surrey on 12 November 1932.