Clive started his research career at University of Cambridge when he performed a measurement of Newton’s constant of gravitation using a beam balance. After a short spell in industry as an acoustics engineer working in the oil exploration industry in France he was appointed as a research fellow and later a staff member at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) near Paris.
Whilst at BIPM, Clive and Terry Quinn developed a beam balance for mass comparisons of 1 kg mass standards which worked with an unprecedented level of accuracy (a few parts in 1011) and also used the balance to perform a test of the equivalence principle using a range of materials. Clive spent a year at JILA in Boulder USA, where he co-led and completed a test of the inverse square law of gravity on a 320 m weather tower in Erie Colorado.
Returning to Birmingham as a Lecturer in 1989, he worked with George Isaak on Solar and Stellar oscillations. In the meantime the continued collaboration with Terry Quinn at BIPM led to a precision measurement of Newton’s constant of gravity in 2001. This work is still continuing.
In 1996, still in Birmingham, he founded the Experimental Gravitational Physics group and has been working on searches for violations of the inverse square law at short ranges and violations of the equivalence principle using room temperature and cryogenic torsion balances.