David Larson

December 17, 1940 - November 4, 2022

Dr. David Andrew Larson, PhD, MD, passed away on Friday, November 4, 2022 while surrounded by loved ones at his home in San Francisco, California.

David, who was better known to friends and family as Dave, Dad, Grandpa, Davo, Dadee, DL, and “Dr. Laaarrson” (sung in an operatic melody), was born on December 17, 1940 in Astoria, Oregon to Francis “Vaunee” Larson and Andrew “Warren” Larson. When Dave was two, Vaunee and Warren moved their family to El Cerrito, California, where Dave and his siblings, Neil, Lora Beth, Mary Lou and Vaunee Ann, spent their childhood years.

As the son of two schoolteachers who strongly emphasized the importance of education, Dave developed an affinity for learning and rigorously pursuing all that he found interesting. During his senior year at El Cerrito High School, Dave became fascinated by the study of physics, and immediately decided that he wanted to pursue a career in the field. After graduation, Dave enrolled at UC Berkeley where he majored in physics, was an honor student and received a commendation as the top physics student in his class. Dave went on to Columbia University on a fellowship to study astrophysics, spending a year there before transferring to the University of Chicago where he obtained a master’s degree in particle physics and a PhD in high energy physics. For his PhD, Dave’s “otherworldly” intellect came to good use as he designed and carried out an experiment that resulted in constraints being able to be placed on theoretical models for the observed distribution of pions detected in the earth’s atmosphere from particles from outer space. After completing his PhD, Dave joined an experimental elementary particle physics group at Cornell and Harvard where he worked long hours for the pure pleasure of conducting scientific research.

Although Dave loved his physics work, after seven years at Cornell, he decided to pursue a new career in medicine. He was accepted into an accelerated medical school program reserved for a small number of highly motivated PhDs at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Dave completed medical school in just two years, and in his final year he fell in love with radiotherapy.

Dave returned to the West Coast for the first year of his residency at the University of California, San Francisco where he met his future wife and stepson, Susan and Jeremy. Dave spent the remainder of his residency at