David Perkins (geneticist)
American geneticist
David Dexter Perkins (May 2, 1919 – January 2, 2007) was an American geneticist, a member of the faculty of the Department of Biology at Stanford University for more than 58 years, from 1948 until his death in 2007. He received his PhD in Zoology in 1949 from Columbia University. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, he served as president of the Genetics Society of America in 1977. In a scientific career that spanned more than six decades, Perkins collaborated on more than 300 papers. His associates included many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who went on to scientific careers throughout the world.
Scientific career
Upon his arrival at Stanford, he began a collaboration with Edward Tatum, who had been working with Neurospora crassa since 1941 in collaboration with George Beadle. In this way, he was connected to the very earliest research with Neurospora. Throughout his career, he continued to work with Neurospora crassa, which he often championed as a model organism. At the time that he died in 2007, a substantial percentage of all researchers in the world who were working with Neurospora crassa had either trained with or collaborated with Perkins or one of his students or associates.
Perkins is best known for his research into the control and regulation of cell division and sexual reproduction in fungi.
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