Obituaries

04 December 2002 |

Joseph ‘Perry’ Danton
Joseph Periam “Perry” Danton, professor emeritus and former dean of the School of Librarianship, died at an Oakland hospital on Nov. 12 following a brief illness. He was 94.

Danton’s expertise included academic and research libraries, library administration, the history of libraries, selection and collection development, comparative and international librarianship, and education for librarianship.

He was a visiting professor at the School of Library Service at Columbia University before moving to Berkeley to become dean of the School of Librarianship in 1946. He served in that post until 1961. While he was dean, the number of faculty and students at the school grew dramatically, and the school’s programs underwent expansion and specialization. The graduate certificate was replaced in 1947 with a bachelor of library science degree and in 1955 with a master of library science degree. A Ph.D. of library science was instituted in 1954.

Danton retired in 1976. A longtime friend, Professor Michael Buckland, said that Danton “was an unwilling retiree, caught by the mandatory retirement age.” In his retirement, Danton remained active academically, and his last study was published in the Library Quarterly some 65 years after his first two articles in that journal, Buckland said.

Danton’s numerous publications are catalogued in “J. Periam Danton: A Bibliography” (School of Librarianship, UC Berkeley, 1976). An oral-history transcript is available from The Bancroft Library or at
sunsite.berkeley.edu:2020/dynaweb/teiproj/oh/unihist/danton/.

Danton was a Fulbright research scholar in Goettingen, Germany, in 1960-61, and in Vienna in 1964-65. He also was a Guggenheim Fellow and a Carnegie Fellow between 1933 and 1935. In 1976, he received the Berkeley Citation, the campus’s highest honor. In 1983, he received the Beta Phi Mu Award from the American Library Associ-ation for distinguished service to education for librarianship.

Danton is survived by his son, Joseph Periam Danton Jr., of Berkeley; his daughter, Jennifer Danton Franz, of Sacramento; and grandchildren, Joseph Felker Danton and Rebecca Felker Danton, both of Berkeley.

At his request, no services will be held. Donations may be made in his memory to the Natural Resources Defense Council, 40 W. 20th St., New York, NY 10011.

John Zivnuska
John Zivnuska, professor emeritus and former dean of forestry at Berkeley and an internationally recognized expert in forest economics and policy, died on Nov. 18 at the age of 86. Zivnuska died at his home in Walnut Creek, six weeks after being diagnosed with cancer.

One of a handful of forest scientists who first applied the rigors of classical economics to forestry, Zivnuska developed a reputation as a strong and well-respected voice in forest economics over his 35-year career. His work, along with that of peers such as the late Henry James Vaux, also professor emeritus and former dean of forestry at Berkeley, helped form the foundation upon which research and education in the economic aspects of modern forest policy and management is based.

Zivnuska’s early work focused on the effects of long-term supply-and-demand trends in establishing national goals for timber growth. He was openly critical of analyses — including those from U.S. Forest Service timber-outlook studies — that failed to take such fundamental economic principles into account. Over the decades he authored or co-authored approximately 190 publications on topics ranging from forest taxation to forestry education.

Born in San Diego on July 10, 1916, Zivnuska would spend most of his life in California. After graduating from Berkeley High School, Zivnuska went on to receive his bachelor’s degree with honors and his master’s degree in forestry at Berkeley in 1938 and 1940, respectively. He left California briefly to get his doctorate in agricultural economics at the University of Minnesota in 1947. That same year, he returned to California with his wife, Ethel Rowland Zivnuska, and three children to join the Berkeley faculty. Ethel Zivnuska died in 1962.

Zivnuska was appointed the fourth — and last — dean of the School of Forestry at Berkeley in 1965. On his watch, the school was renamed the School of Forestry and Conservation and continued to be regarded as one of the top-ranked professional schools in the country. When the school merged into the newly formed College of Natural Resources in 1974, Zivnuska returned to full-time teaching and research until his retirement in 1982. He received the prestigious Berkeley Citation from the campus that same year.

Zivnuska is survived by his wife of 38 years, Marion Marliave Zivnuska; his daughters, Ann Welker of Moraga and Louise Zivnuska of Walnut Creek; his son, John R. Zivnuska, of Mexico Beach, Fla.; six grandchildren and one great-grandson.

A private memorial service will be held later this month. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the John A. Zivnuska Memorial Fund, University of California, Berkeley, University Relations, 2440 Bancroft Way MC4200, Berkeley, CA 94720-4200.