David W. Deamer

Dave Deamer completed undergraduate studies in chemistry at Duke University in 1961, and a Ph.D. at the Ohio State University School of Medicine. After post-doctoral research at UC Berkeley, Deamer became a faculty member at UC Davis in 1967, then moved to UC Santa Cruz in 1994. He has been a visiting professor at Bristol University, Australian National University as a Guggenheim Fellow, and the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel. Deamer's primary research interests include nanopore sequencing of DNA and the origin of cellular life.

Deamer is the author of First Life, published by the University of California Press, and in 2017 submitted a manuscript with the title Assembling Life to Oxford University Press. Both books describe a new approach to understanding the origin of life that is based on the author's visits to volcanic regions in Kamchatka, Iceland, Hawaii and northern California. Deamer argues that the most plausible site for the origin of cellular life four billion years ago would be fresh water hydrothermal fields associated with volcanic land masses rather than the salty ocean, as most researchers believe.

Deamer co-authored The Hunt for FOXP5 with Wallace Kaufman, his college room mate at Duke. This novel is about Avalon Murphy, a young Kazakh girl adopted by Professor Michelle Murphy at the University of Oregon. Avalon was born with a mutation called FOXP5 which makes her the first member of a new human species. Avalon is kidnapped during a visit to Kazahkstan and Michelle must find a way to rescue her daughter.