Posted: March 4, 2026
By: Nancy Tregunno (Nancy Lane’s goddaugther, friend and namesake)
Dr. Nancy Lane Perham (BSc'58, MSc'60, LLD'85) (1936–2025) lived a life filled with curiosity-led discovery and joie de vivre. Encouraging others to discover and pursue their passions was a natural gift. Once she knew your interests, no accomplishment or idea was too small for her thoughtful line of questioning and she promoted pathways to excellence. She had a flair for doing things her own unique way, including leaving this world on her 89th birthday.
Growing up in Halifax, Dr. Lane Perham was fascinated by marine life she discovered on Nova Scotia’s beaches, sparking a lifelong love of invertebrates. She was also an accomplished young dancer and actor.
At a young age, Dr. Lane Perham told her mother that she wanted to contribute to mankind. At high school, she was told that women could not be scientists, only technicians. Undeterred, she completed undergraduate and master’s degrees in science at Dalhousie where she earned the Governor General’s Gold Medal for the top marks in her final exams. Scholarships enabled her to obtain a PhD at Oxford University, followed by post-doctoral work at Yale University. There, she met her future husband, Dr. Richard Perham (who would become an accomplished biochemist), over a shared electron microscope. People kept thinking that she was either a technician or a secretary. When Richard first came to the Yale lab and inquired, “where might I find Dr. Lane?” she concisely replied, “I am she!”
They shared many common interests in science, the arts and history. They married in 1969 and remained married until Richard’s death in 2015. They had two children, Temple, who lives with her family in California, and Quentin, who was born with cerebral palsy and lives in the Cambridge, U.K., area. Despite his challenges, Dr. Lane Perham encouraged Quentin to develop his interests, such as learning the titles and composers of a wide spectrum of classical music or reciting poetry such as Canadian John McRae’s “In Flander’s Fields” or Shakespeare passages by heart.
Becoming a faculty member at University of Cambridge in 1968 and a fellow at Girton College in 1970, Dr. Lane Perham offered a refreshing perspective and voice of change throughout her career. She had a lifelong impact on many of her students, whom she influenced with her enthusiasm for biology and her belief in their potential.
Golgi body in insect tissues (2016). Acrylic on canvas from an electron micrograph by Dr. Nancy Lane Perham.
Her deep understanding for cells was expressed through painting. She described biological structures as “exquisitely beautiful” and “a wondrous cross between a painting and a sculptural object.” She wanted to share that beauty with the public. Her works have appeared on journal covers and in the 1995 Royal Academy of Art’s Summer Exhibition.
At the request of British Prime Minister John Major, Dr. Lane Perham chaired a working party on Women in Science, Engineering, Technology. This advocacy resulted in her being awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1994 for services to science. Despite many awards and accomplishments, what seemed to bring her the most joy was continuous learning, swimming in the ocean and spending cherished time with family and friends.
Dr. Nancy Lane Perham was inducted into the Nova Scotia Science Hall of Fame in 2006.
