Peter John Anderson
June 16, 1939-May 25, 2025
Palo Alto, California
Peter John Anderson, John to everyone who knew him, beloved husband, father, grandfather and friend to many, passed away peacefully on May 25th, 2025 at the age of 85. He will be greatly missed.
John was born on the island of Gulangyu near Xiamen, China on June 16, 1939. He was the only child of missionaries, Peter Anderson, a Scot, and Constance Mary Hopkinson, an Englishwoman from Suffolk. They had met and married in China where they stayed despite Japanese attacks on China in 1937-8, which sent waves of refugees from Xiamen to Gulangyu. The mission established refugee camps and cared for the refugees. In January 1941, when John was 18 months old, the family went on furlough to New Zealand, hoping to return to their beloved China when hostilities ceased.
After WWII ended it was still not possible for his parents to return to their missionary work and so John grew up in New Zealand, first in rural Queenstown and then Middlemarch, where his father was Presbyterian minister. He attended Waitaki Boys High School in Oamaru, and Otago University in Dunedin, where he was awarded a PhD in Biochemistry in 1970.
John then came to the US for post-doctoral work in Biochemistry at the Indiana University Medical School in Indianapolis, IN with his wife Jennifer (nee Manton) and daughter Catherine. His younger daughter Frances was born there in 1971. John’s subsequent biochemical career was in Boston, Mass. primarily at Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary, where his research focus was in Glaucoma. He also completed an MPH at Boston University School of Public Health in 1993 and managed Breast Cancer related data systems at the Mass. Dept. of Public Health, and other Veterans’ Health related systems for the Veterans Administration.
Upon retirement, John and Jennifer moved in 2005 to Mountain View, California to be near their first grandchild. John continued his life-long pursuits of hiking and cycling, and took up writing, joining a writing group at MVLAAS. Major achievements in his later years were the climb of Mount Earnslaw in New Zealand in 2012, and the completion of a novel (Silence of God).
Throughout his life John was a passionate anti-war activist in every place he lived, with the Dunedin Committee on Vietnam in 1965, Boston groups such as Arlington United for Justice with Peace (AUJP) from 1980-2005, and in Mountain View with Peninsula Peace and Justice Center (PPJC).
He moved to Webster House in Palo Alto in November 2017, and then to the Memory care unit of Ivy Park in Palo Alto in January 2024. He died at Ivy Park on May 25, 2025 after a long struggle with the ravages of Alzheimer’s Disease. Our heartfelt thanks to the staff there who cared for him so well during this most difficult period of his life. He leaves his wife, Jennifer, daughters Catherine and Frances, and grandchildren Natalie, Luan and Deva. We miss him and treasure his memory.
A memorial gathering is planned for Saturday June 21 in Mountain View.
A scientist to the very end, John donated his brain to the Neurodegenerative Disease Brain Bank to advance our understanding of these devastating diseases. In lieu of flowers, donations in his memory may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association, the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences Memory and Aging Center, or to PPJC.
