23 Facts About David Penny

David Penny researched the nature of evolutionary transformations, and published widely in the fields of phylogenetic tree, genetics and evolutionary biology.

David Penny completed his PhD in botany at Yale University in 1965 and later worked as a postdoctoral researcher at McMaster University.

David Penny returned to New Zealand in 1966 and joined the staff at Massey University, within the Department of Plant Biology, School of Biological Sciences, Institute for Molecular BioSciences, and Institute of Fundamental Sciences and in 2005 Penny was named a distinguished professor.

From 2002 to 2010, David Penny co-led the Allan Wilson Centre, one of the original New Zealand Centres of Research Excellence, hosted at Massey University.

On his retirement in 2017, David Penny was accorded the title of professor emeritus by Massey University.

David Penny's research has focused on theoretical biology, molecular evolution, human evolution, and the history of science.

David Penny was involved in research teams that explored tree building methods.

David Penny suggested it was an example of evolution being "backwards, sideways and occasionally forward".

David Penny was part of a research team that explored theories for eukaryote origins and noted some of these ignore life history and ecological principles, and it was necessary to challenge predictions there was a long period in early life with no predators.

David Penny has been involved in 2010 research that suggested some ratites nested and therefore had previously flown.

David Penny was part of a team, that in 2013 continued investigating the relationship between green algae and the evolution of land plants.

In 1989 a team involving David Penny used the science of evolutionary trees to analyse sequences from the H1 strand of human viruses and concluded their findings were "in agreement with the biological model".

David Penny told Kim Hill on RNZ in 2008, any model that couldn't be tested was not of "much use", and a paper he co-authored in 1982 considered claims by Karl Popper that "Darwinism [was] not a testable scientific theory".

David Penny participated in research in 1991 that aimed to determine, without ambiguity, if evolutionary theory could meet Popper's criteria for the demarcation of science.

David Penny said that what has become known as the tree of life, is biblical in origin and not a phrase first used by Darwin, although he did describe it as a 'useful simile'.

David Penny was the president of the New Zealand Association of Scientists between 1989 and 1991.

David Penny died in Palmerston North on 20 May 2024, at the age of 85.

In 1990, David Penny was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

David Penny was awarded the Marsden Medal in 2000, for outstanding service to science in New Zealand and internationally where he had extensive recognition and networks of collaborators, being acknowledged for "Associate Fellowships at Merton College, Oxford, and Darwin College Cambridge and as Past President of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution".

In 2004, David Penny received the Rutherford Medal for contributions to theoretical biology, molecular evolution and the analysis of DNA.

David Penny was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 2006 New Year Honours, for services to science.

In 2018, David Penny became the third New Zealander to be named a National Academy of Sciences foreign associate.

Mike Steel, of the University of Canterbury, wrote in a tribute article in the New Zealand Science Review in 2009, that "David Penny's formula [remained] the most remarkable closed-form expression for any class of phylogenetic trees in evolutionary biology".