In Memorium

Pran Nath Vohra
1919-2004

Pran Vohra was born in Gwaliar, India. He attended the University of Punjab in Lahore, where he received a B.S. in 1940 and an M.S. in 1942, both in chemistry.

From 1942 to 1949, Pran was a research assistant at the University of Punjab and the Council of Scientific Industrial Research at Delhi. He came to the United States as an international trainee at Joseph E. Seagram and Sons, Inc. in Louisville, Kentucky, from 1949 to 1950. He attended Washington State College where he received a second M.S. in 1954. He received his Ph.D. in nutrition at UC Davis in 1958 and continued on as an assistant research nutritionist for a year afterwards.

Pran worked with a feed company in England for a year and was a poultry specialist at the US Agency for International Development office in Delhi for a year before being hired as a faculty member in 1962 by the Department of Poultry Husbandry at UC Davis.

Avian nutrition was Pran’s chosen field of study. He studied amino acid and vitamin metabolism, protein requirements, the function of toxic components of feeds, mineral availability and the energy and nutritional values of many feedstuffs, using chickens, turkeys, game birds and Japanese quail.

At UC Davis Pran taught comparative nutrition of avian species, vitamin function in metabolism and livestock and poultry production in developing countries. He gave numerous freshman seminars and mentored graduate students, many from other countries. He traveled extensively in Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia and India and spent four periods in China as a consultant for the US Feed Grains Council and the American Soybean Association. He retired in 1989 but remained active in the department.

After retirement Pran took trips on a glider and in a hot air balloon accompanied by Dr. Annie King from the department.  He joined a campus program to learn to walk on hot coals and accomplished the walk twice. During faculty meetings, to keep awake, he would often sketch pictures of other faculty that were quite accomplished.

In 2001, Pran went to India to be with family. He died of heart failure in New Delhi in May of 2004.

Dr. Vohra was a member of the Poultry Science Association, World’s Poultry Association, the Biochemical Society, American Society for Nutritional Sciences and Sigma Xi. In 1972 he received the American Feed Manufacturers Research Award. A conference room on third floor Meyer Hall is named for him. He, along with Professor Emeritus Howard Kratzer and the late Professor Emeritus Frank Ogasawara, established a scholarship in the Animal Science Department for graduate and undergraduate students in avian sciences. Contributions to the Krazter, Ogasawara and Vohra Scholarship in Pran’s name are welcome and may be made out to “Regents of UC” and sent to the Department of Animal Science, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616.

Wade C. Rollins
1912-2002

Wade Rollins was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, on February 12, 1912, and died November 15, 2002. He and his mother, who was of Native American heritage, and his father, a postal service worker, moved to Los Angeles in 1926, where Wade attended Belmont High School. He did well academically and in track and field sports and, throughout much of his life, continued to run to maintain good physical condition.

Wade first attended Los Angeles City College, then transferred to UC Berkeley, where he received an A.B. degree in 1933 and an M.A. degree in 1935, both in mathematics. He was a social worker in Alameda County for two years, then left in July 1937 to volunteer in the International Brigade of the Loyalist Forces in the Spanish Civil War. On entering Spain from France via the underground he was briefly imprisoned in the Napoleonic fortress at Figueras by anarchist Spanish forces. He served as an artilleryman in the 14th Battery of the Brigade. His wry sense of humor was exemplified by his comment, “Thank God I’m here as a volunteer; I’d hate to be here because I had to be.” Wade loved the Spanish people, learning their language and serving as official translator for his battery. On leaving Spain, he hiked over the Pyrenees in street shoes.

When Wade returned from Europe in January 1939, he was quite a celebrity with the Bay Area left wing movement. He met his wife at a lecture he gave on the Lincoln Brigade of the Spanish Civil War, and they were married in 1941. He resumed graduate study at UC Berkeley in 1939 in mathematical statistics under Professor Jerzy Neyman, meanwhile also working as a dance instructor, reader in mathematics, social worker and claims agent for the US Employment Service. During the 1942 to 1945 war years, he worked as an electrician in the US Navy shipyards in Vallejo.

In 1945 Professor Neyman recommended him to Professor P.W. Gregory of the Animal Husbandry Department at UC Davis as a person well qualified to analyze animal breeding data. This period marked the beginning of the science of quantitative genetics, which depended heavily on statistical methodology. Wade came to Davis that October, completed his Ph.D. in Genetics in 1948 and was hired as Instructor in Animal Husbandry in January 1949.

One early collaborative study involved analyses of the differences among cattle breeds and breed crosses at the Imperial Valley Field Station in their responses to high temperature stresses. Another was estimation of the heterotic effects of crossbreeding in beef cattle and development of breeding plans to use heterosis to improve productivity. His analyses of accumulated beef cattle data also led to important advances in knowledge of inbreeding effects, genetic variation in several production traits and inherited defects. He spent two sabbatic leaves at the Animal Breeding Research Organization in Edinburgh, first researching identical twinning in cattle and later focusing on genetically determined muscular hypertrophy (“double muscling”) in beef cattle, which he had studied at Davis but expanded to include the condition in European breeds. He became a leading expert on the topic.

Wade served on numerous senate, college and departmental committees. He retired in 1978 but continued to live in Davis a short distance from his office in Hart Hall. His well-known habit of rising early was accentuated during his retirement years, when he was typically in his office from 3:00 to 4:00 a.m. to midmorning.

 In 1995, with failing eyesight, he moved to San Diego to be near his son where he lived until his passing.

Gifts may be sent to the Animal Science Memorial Fund, made out to UC Regents but sent to the department. This fund supports student activities.