Lasting Memories

David D. Perkins
May 2, 1919-Jan. 2, 2007
Stanford, California

David D. Perkins, who helped pioneer genetic research at Stanford University, died Jan. 2, 2007, at Stanford Hospital. He was 87. David Perkins was part of the biological sciences faculty at Stanford for 58 years.

David Perkins was born May 2, 1919, in Watertown, N.Y. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester in 1941 and then served as an intelligence officer in the Army Air Force in England during World War II. After the war, he received a doctorate degree in zoology from Columbia University and joined the Stanford faculty in 1948. He married Dorothy Newmeyer Perkins, a research assistant in his lab, in 1952 and collaborated with her until her retirement in 1988.

"David and Dot had the rare combination of integrity, kindness, diligence and modesty," said Maja Bojko, a postdoctoral fellow at the Perkins lab from 1985 to 1988.

He became a professor emeritus in 1989 at age 70, the mandatory retirement age at the time, but was immediately recalled to active teaching and research again.

Both Perkins and his wife had a strong interest in social justice issues.

"They not only brought black students from East Palo Alto to the lab for tutoring, they hired a young black civil rights worker with only a high school education to work in the lab from 1968 to 1972," said Robert J. Lloyd of Eastern Washington University. "It was the only job I have ever had that never felt like going to work ... David and Dot provided a yardstick; they taught by example. And they never lost their passion for justice."

The couple is survived by their daughter, Susan Perkins, of Seattle, Wash.