Dave, our class valedictorian who served many years as a class officer, and who, as a career physicist, championed the cause of teaching science to non-science majors at Princeton, died of prostate cancer Sept. 30, 2006, at the home of his daughter, Anne Mroz, in Parsippany, N.J.

Dave was one of 13 family members in two generations to graduate from Princeton.  

Born in White Plains, N.Y., he prepped at Kingswood School in West Hartford, Conn. At Princeton he majored in physics, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated with highest honors. He worked in Navy operations research during World War II and earned a Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics from MIT in 1948. He was a professor at Washington, Columbia, and Purdue universities until 1958, when he won a Fulbright scholarship to Australia. He taught physics at the Australian National University in Canberra for 17 years. Later he taught at Brown and then spent six years with the Department of Energy in Germantown, Md.  

Dave was class treasurer from 1983 to 1988, vice president from 1988 to 1993, and chairman of our 50th reunion.  

In 1947 he married Virginia Close, who predeceased him. They had three children, Anne Mroz, Frank David Peaslee, and Graham Peaslee ’81. In 1973 he married Lillian Fuls, who also predeceased him. Besides his children, Dave is survived by seven grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.

Undergraduate Class of 1943