The School of Chemical Sciences at the University of Illinois has a long-standing tradition in the development of state-of-the-art research facilities accessible to principal investigators in both academia and industry throughout this country and beyond our shores. One of the pioneers in this endeavor was Professor George Lindenberg Clark, who established the first analytical X-ray laboratory in this country at M.I.T. two (2) years before joining the faculty at Illinois in 1927. Throughout his distinguished career, Dr. Clark applied X-ray analyses to a wide variety of materials, including metals and minerals, natural and synthetic fibers, natural and synthetic rubber, clays, carbon black, storage battery plates, corks and waxes. He was far ahead of this time in recognizing the strong inter-relationship between instrumentation and analysis and was among the first, if not the very first, to introduce each newly-developed instrumental method into the University research community. Professor Clark's industrial collaborators were as numerous as his doctoral students. Over a span of more than three decades Dr. Clark, or "G. L." as he was known to his students, directed the post-graduate research of more than eighty-five candidates (85). In 1952, following twenty-five (25) years of applied X-ray research, the first consolidated X-ray facility was dedicated at the University of Illinois and G. L. Clark's many students, colleagues and friends honored him with the plaque now proudly displayed in the facility.