Evert B. Clark was born in Gainesville, Georgia, on October 15, 1926. He served in the U. S. Navy from 1944 to 1946 and graduated from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in June 1947, with an A. B. in journalism and naval science and tactics. From June 1947 to October 1948 Clark worked as a reporter, state editor, and features editor for the Durham, North Carolina Morning Herald. In November 1948 he became a reporter for the Washington, D. C. Daily News, working also as assistant city editor and aviation editor for that newspaper through December 1955.

In January 1956 Clark began working at Aviation Week Magazine, serving at various times as its Washington bureau chief, space techinlogy editor (the first space editor in the magazine's history), and military editor. He joined the Washington bureau of the New York Times in September 1963 as a science correspondent, specializing in aviation and space stories. In June 1968 he joined Newsweek magazine in its Washington bureau as a science correspondent (again specializing in aviation and space). He also covered the Watergate scandal for Newsweek from its inception to its conclusion. From April 1978 until his death, Clark was a technical editor for Business Week and other magazines connected with the McGraw-Hill World News Bureau in Washington. He died on July 7, 1988.

Clark received many awards for his writing, including the National Space Club's journalism prize in 1969, in which Clark was cited for his "penetrating, consistently informed and lucid writing on all phases of the national space program: sometimes critical, always objective and thorough, resulting in outstanding reporting to the world at large." The National Press Foundation has established an award in Clark's memory. The Evert Clark Award, presented annually to a journalist 30 or younger, is intended to encourage young science writers by recognizing outstanding reporting in the science area. The award was first presented in 1990.