Gerald “Jerry” Jacobs
Gerald H. Jacobs (“Jerry”), a long-time faculty member at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), died in Santa Barbara on October 14, 2025, after a long illness.
Jerry was born September 14, 1934, in Brattleboro VT. His parents, Gerald and Bertha (Haskins) Jacobs lived in nearby Wilmington, a small mountain town. He was the youngest of three children (sisters, Priscilla and June), and with a rowdy gang of friends enjoyed a free-range childhood that allowed for exploration of the surrounding lakes, streams, and mountains. The long Vermont winters fostered weekly trips to the local library for armloads of books, which initiated Jerry’s lifelong habit of omnivorous reading.
After attending local schools, Jerry went to the University of Vermont (UVM), becoming the first in his family to attend college. That turned out to be a pivotal step in Jerry’s life, one that he recognized in later life by establishing a scholarship fund at UVM to support needy Vermont students.
Subsequently, like many of his peers of the time, Jerry was subject to the national draft. The Army sent him to a military research unit at Fort Knox, KY, where for two years he participated in the development and writing of training manuals for members of armored tank crews.
Following Army service, Jerry entered graduate school at Indiana University (IU), Bloomington. There he joined the laboratory of Russell De Valois, a pioneer in studies of the biological correlates of primate color vision. That topic formed the basis for his doctoral dissertation.
After an additional year at IU as a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Jerry became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas (UT), Austin. That move marked the start of a 42-year academic career as a laboratory scientist and teacher. For most of that period, he was a faculty member in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at UCSB. He retired from UCSB holding the rank of Distinguished Professor.
Jerry’s research program involved laboratory investigations of the biological bases of mammalian vision that he approached from a multidisciplinary perspective involving behavioral, electrophysiological, and genetic tools. This program, carried out in collaboration with a shifting series of graduate students, undergraduate students, and colleagues, produced a long list of technical publications. For this work, Jerry received numerous awards and honors, both domestic and international. These included being named the UCSB Faculty Research Lecturer and receiving the Proctor Medal from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. Jerry loved the life of an academic, a profession that gave him the freedom to try and puzzle through laboratory problems, to incorporate emerging technologies in experiments, and to train students—both in the lab and in the classroom—and watch them grow and come into their own.
After an earlier unsuccessful marriage, Jerry had the great good fortune of meeting and marrying Christine Allen, a beautiful woman having extraordinary talents. Together, they enjoyed more than forty years of happiness. They traveled the world, both during their working lives, and then more leisurely and often with their best friends from Berkeley and Austin during retirement years. They also participated in the many pleasures that are so abundantly available in Santa Barbara—visiting local restaurants, walking the beaches, and attending music and dance performances.
Away from academia, Jerry lived a physically active life. He learned to ski in Vermont before the age of five, and kept up this passion during his years in California. In addition, he enjoyed local hiking, swimming, and tennis. A particular focus was running, which he did almost daily for forty years, participating in dozens of road races, a practice that continued until he ran his last race at age 80. Ever the teacher, Jerry would comment that his race performances, “merited a grade of about B-“ while adding, “prior to grade inflation.”
Jerry is survived by his beloved wife Chris, along with friends and former students scattered around the world, all of whom will remember him for his quick and irrepressible sense of humor, his pride in his home state of Vermont, his impressive memory for people, places and events, his readiness to help, and his modesty about personal achievement.
