Dr. Clyde Roper has worked as a zoologist in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History since 1966. He conducts extensive research on the diversity, morphology, behavioral systematics and biology of cephalopods (squids, octopuses, nautiluses, and cuttlefishes), and in deep-sea biology.
Clyde is a world-renowned expert on cephalopods, including the giant squid, a specimen of which is displayed in an exhibit at the Natural Museum of Natural History, "In Search of the Giant Squid".
A pioneer in the field of bioluminescence (the production of cool light by living organisms) in mid-water cephalopods, Clyde and a colleague proved the hypothesis of counter-illumination, by which deep-sea life uses bioluminescent light as a form of camouflage from predators in the blackness of the deep sea. He has discovered and described new species, a number of new genera, and one new family of cephalopods.
Clyde received his bachelor's degree in biology from Transylvania University, Lexington, KY, in 1959. He received both his master's degree (in 1962) and his doctorate (in 1966) from what was then called the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Miami in Florida. (It is now the Rosensteil School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.) Roper received an Honorary Doctor degree from Transylvania University in 1997.
He has published more than 100 works in scientific journals and books. The United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization published Roper's Catalog of Cephalopods of the World in 1984. The book describes the biology and distribution of cephalopods that are used for human food and fishery resources around the world.
Dr. Roper and his wife Ingrid are residents of Vienna, VA. They have two sons.
Courtesy of the Museum of Natural History.