Devra G. Kleiman dies
Devra G. Kleiman, 67, a biologist whose groundbreaking research on giant pandas and South American monkeys showed how zoos can play a critical role in preserving endangered species, died April 29 at George Washington University Hospital. She had cancer.
Dr. Kleiman was making headlines for her efforts to breed the National Zoo’s first pair of giant pandas.
Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing were gifts from China, arriving at the zoo in 1972. Almost no rigorous research had been conducted on pandas and little was known about their behavior.
Devra Gail Kleiman was born Nov. 15, 1942, in the Bronx, N.Y. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 1964. As an undergraduate, she raised a baby dingo in her apartment one summer and took a part-time job as an assistant on a research project to tame wolves.
She spent hours in their cages doing crossword puzzles and homework assignments. The experience helped persuade her to forgo a career in medicine and study animal behavior instead.
She received her doctorate in zoology from the University of London in 1969. After being turned down for one job because “there weren’t enough women’s toilets,” she once said, she became one of the National Zoo’s first female scientists in 1972.
She became head of the Department of Zoological Research in 1979 and the zoo’s assistant research director in 1986. She wrote and edited several books, including “Wild Mammals in Captivity,” an animal-husbandry handbook and “Lion Tamarins: Biology and Conservation.”
After retiring in 2001, she continued to work on a number of conservation projects and was an adjunct professor of biology at the University of Maryland, a position she had held since 1979. She enjoyed spending time at her vacation home in Chincoteague, Va.
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