San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Beloved science editor of Chronicle
David Perlman got to spend nearly eight decades doing what he loved most: hanging out with scientists, chasing down big stories from earthquakes to moon landings, and writing newspaper articles about them eloquently and fast.
He loved everything about newspapers, and he was intensely proud that most of his career was spent in San Francisco, covering science for The Chronicle.
At the time of his retirement in 2017, at the age of 98, Perlman — known fondly by his colleagues as “Dr. Dave” — was believed to be the oldest fulltime news reporter at a U.S. metro newspaper.
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Perlman, who had cancer, died Friday in the Richmond District home he had lived in for more than half a century, surrounded by family. He was 101.
Except for brief stints away, during and just after World War II, when he served in the Army and then wrote overseas, Perlman had worked at The Chronicle since 1940. After retiring, he retained the title of science editor emeritus, consulting often with colleagues on science matters and frequently setting them straight.
Most of his Chronicle days — except for a short turn decades ago as city editor — were spent writing science stories. He wrote about a baffling new disease that came to be known as AIDS; he sat near Mission Control when astronauts first walked on the moon; he told readers that the world’s climate was changing and that its species were disappearing. His early passion for protecting the Marin County coast was credited with helping to create the Point Reyes National Seashore.
The pure joy he brought to the work, along with the expertise he accumulated, made him a dean of American science journalism and a role model to generations of younger reporters.
Jeff Johnson, president of the Hearst Newspaper Group, called Perlman “one for the ages.” Hearst owns The Chronicle.
“The fact that he kept contributing through his whole career was amazing to me,” said Johnson, who was publisher of The Chronicle when Perlman retired. “He was always publishing, always, right into his late 90s. That’s tough. What a full life.”
Chronicle Managing Editor Michael Gray called Perlman “the epitome of what every journalist should be — curious, passionate, skeptical and caring. He told the world what it needed to know and presented it clearly and concisely. There will never be another like him.”
Perlman came to work early and left late. In between, he scanned science journals, checked in with Nobel Prize winners, pounded manual typewriters and — later on — computer keyboards with passionate ferocity, and he always found time to chat with a younger reporter or editor about a professional or personal problem.
On his last day of fulltime work, Aug. 4, 2017, he allowed himself the rare treat of actually leaving 15 minutes early — after having just filed his last story for the paper as a regular reporter. With a sly smile he approached his editor. “I’m taking an early slide,” he said, drawing a laugh. The entire newsroom rose and clapped for him as he left.
That last story was a scientific examination of the upcoming total eclipse of the sun, and it ran in the Aug. 6, 2017, Sunday paper under the headline, “Millions preparing to watch eclipse.” He had lost track of how many solar and lunar eclipses he had covered, but his colleagues and readers had little doubt solar eclipses came along far more often than reporters like Perlman. His words over the years suggested that, in the matter of eclipses, there was always something new under the sun.
“Daylight will turn to midnight . ... The summer air will turn chilly, birds will chirp uneasily in the unexpected darkness and the stars will emerge,” Perlman wrote of the 2017 solar eclipse.
He was a humble man, despite being honored dozens of times. Plaques and trophies gathered dust in his corner cubicle in The Chronicle newsroom. Awards that weren’t given to him were named after him and, in 2009 at age 90, the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science recognized him with a special achievement honor. He also picked up top honors from the Society of Professional Journalists and the American
Chemical Society.
He interrupted his science regimen to serve as Chronicle city editor in the late 1970s, directing the coverage of the mass suicides of Peoples Temple members in Guyana in November 1978 and, 11 days later, the slayings of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
But Perlman couldn’t wait to abandon his managerial duties and get back to reporting, and seemed never happier than when the paper gave its OK to his earnest request to step down.
“Being an editor, winning awards, that’s all nice, but all I ever really wanted to be was a
reporter,” Perlman once said. “I never thought about doing anything else. I wanted to save the world, and I just thought it was the most glamorous damn job in the world.” Among the thousands of stories Perlman filed in his career were coverages of moon shots, Mars landings, environmental catastrophes and countless earthquakes, including the 1989 Loma Prieta and 2014 Napa shakers. When the AIDS crisis emerged in the early 1980s, he and his Chronicle colleague and friend Randy Shilts were among the first in the nation to report on it.
In 1964, he went on a twomonth trip to the Galapagos Islands, retracing Charles Darwin’s research on evolution, and filed more than two dozen captivating stories by ship’s radio. In 1952, his stories on the importance of the Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado and Utah helped save the park from being destroyed by a dam project.
Whether it was a small story of a small quake in Eureka or a major piece on the historic Mars Rover landing, he typed stories clearly, cleanly and quickly — with just two fingers. He was not intimidated by big numbers, big events or big ideas.
“In a highspeed maneuver 83 million miles from Earth, scientists will aim a twostage spacecraft at a distant comet late Sunday night, hoping to blast a deep crater into its icy nucleus and spew out its insides to reveal what these messengers from the early solar system can tell us of their origin,” he wrote in 2005.
Evolution, climate change and space exploration were favorite topics. In the final years of his life the very mention of them would get his face to light up. He had little patience for those who denigrated science, and he viewed education of the public through journalism as something sacred.
“The communication of what science is all about is vital, and David has been doing that brilliantly for his entire career,” thenUCSF Chancellor J. Michael Bishop said in 2000 upon awarding Perlman the UCSF Medal, the first time a journalist had won the university’s highest honor. “I can’t think of a more appropriate individual to honor.
“His work is accurate, readable — and there’s a passion in the guy for science.”
Another admirer, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, praised Perlman at his retirement party for “really making a deep contribution to journalism and to scientific expertise.”
Born in Baltimore on Dec. 30, 1918 — the year World War I ended and before the launch of Time magazine or radio news — David Aaron Perlman was the son of Jess and Sarah Perlman. His parents separated when he was 4 and he spent most of his childhood in New York City and Paris, living with his mother, who was an employment counselor for a Jewish agency that found jobs for young women.
Asked by friends about the origin of his kind manner and his willingness to help others, Perlman would answer that his mother was a major influence in his life.
After receiving a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1940, Perlman worked briefly for a paper in Bismarck, N.D. He soon tired of Dakota life and called his classmate Bill German, who was then working at The Chronicle and later became its executive editor. “Get me out of here!” Perlman recalled telling him.
German got him hired as a copy boy, and within months Perlman was banging out police stories and the other fare of a beginning reporter.
In October 1941, Perlman married Anne Salz, a young San Francisco woman he met at a party at an apartment on the winding portion of Lombard Street. A short time later after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Perlman enlisted in the U.S. Army.
He served throughout World War II as a second lieutenant, mostly working in the military media. When the war ended in 1945, he got a job in Paris for the European edition of the New York Herald Tribune, where he remained until moving to New York with his wife to work for the paper in 1948.
But San Francisco was in his heart, he always recalled, so in 1951 he rejoined The Chronicle as a reporter. For several years he worked general assignment jobs, and then in 1957 he fatefully broke a leg skiing.
While he was recovering in bed, a friend gave him a copy of the book “The Nature of the Universe,” and its scientific recounting of how the universe began excited him.
“I started reading it and thought, ‘Well, this is fascinating,’ so when I got back to work I started looking around for science stories,” Perlman recalled years later. “Pretty soon I was hooked. I was a science writer from then on.”
Among the first issues he took on as a science writer was the notion of creating the Point Reyes National Seashore in western Marin County. His coverage was so compelling, it was credited as instrumental to the park’s designation as a protected area. After Congress’ approval, Perlman was given one of the pens President John F. Kennedy used to sign the law in 1962.
Throughout his long career, he never lost his cheery disposition and dedication to getting a story first, and getting it right. “Hiya, kid!” he’d call out to colleagues as he made his way into the newsroom every day. Other reporters often sought his advice, and whenever they shared with him that they had a scoop in the works, Perlman’s face would brighten and he’d say, “Well, get to it!”
During his retirement and well into his second century, he read The Chronicle from cover to cover every morning and followed closely the course of the coronavirus pandemic — and appeared more than ready to rush back to the newsroom any minute and write stories about it.
He was preceded in death by his wife, Anne, in 2002. Perlman is survived by a daughter, Katy Perlman of Aptos; two sons, Eric Perlman of Truckee and Thomas Perlman of Salinas; by three grandchildren; by his longtime companion Gladys Thacher of San Francisco; and by caregivers Eloini and Sue Qiolevu and Martin Madden. A memorial gathering will be held when the pandemic allows.