He was professor of integrative biology and Director and curator of herpetology of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley.
[4] Wake was born in Webster, South Dakota, and grew up in nearby Pierpont.
He cited as a strong influence his maternal grandfather, a Lutheran pastor and amateur naturalist who took David on botanical walks and introduced him to Latin terminology and evolutionary principles.
in 1960 and PhD in 1964: writing his doctoral dissertation on the biology of lungless salamanders (family Plethodontidae).
He was a Guggenheim Fellow (1981 – 82) and was recipient of the Distinguished Herpetologist Award from the Herpetologists’ League (1984), the Grinnell Medal from the MVZ (1998), the Henry S. Fitch Award from the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (1999), the Joseph Leidy Medal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (2006) and the Fellows Medal of the California Academy of Sciences (2012).