Daniel Halperin of Cambridge and Oak Bluffs died peacefully on May 12, 2026, at Care Dimensions Hospice in Lincoln, surrounded by his family.
Daniel was born on Jan. 2, 1937, in Brooklyn, N.Y., to Harry and Lillian Halperin. His childhood in Brooklyn was filled with a love of sports, especially baseball, and spending time with his brother Morton, friends, and cousins.
A product of the New York City public schools, he graduated from City College of New York and earned his law degree at Harvard Law School. Dan began his career in private practice in New York City, and twice served in the Office of Tax Policy at the U.S. Treasury Department, from 1967 through 1970 and from 1977 through 1980, including as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy.
Widely recognized as one of the top tax scholars in the country, he spent more than 40 years as a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown Law School, and Harvard University. From 1996 until he retired from teaching, Dan was the Stanley S. Surrey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. This was especially meaningful to him because Stanley Surrey was his teacher and mentor. In 2013, he also served as the inaugural Martin D. Ginsburg Visiting Chair of Taxation at Georgetown Law School, where he had taught from 1981 to 1996. He focused on how the tax system shapes the way people save for retirement, how it treats nonprofit and charitable institutions, and the taxation of the time value of money, that is, the tax impacts related to the timing of when income and deductions are recognized. He continued to write after retiring from teaching, publishing his last article in March 2026, which revisited his 40-year-old seminal article on taxing the time value of money.
He believed deeply that people who worked hard for their entire lives deserved to be able to retire with security and dignity. Whether formulating policy, writing academic articles, or teaching, he was driven by a belief that a fair and equitable tax and pension system was essential for a just society. He was a longtime board member of the Pension Rights Center, most recently serving as its vice-chair.
Dan was a humble, generous, and thoughtful colleague, and was particularly proud of his students who became scholars, teachers, and tax lawyers. They will carry forward his example that rigor and kindness can and should co-exist in their teaching and practice. Dan hoped that they would also continue the work of ensuring that our tax and retirement systems benefit all of us, not only the wealthy and powerful.
In December 1961, Dan met Marcia Hellman at a party. They started dating, but in what he always called the dumbest thing he ever did, he did not cancel a long-planned New Year’s Eve date with someone else. Fortunately, Marcia forgave him, and they began a nearly 65-year love affair full of travel, music, family, and dancing in the kitchen. Dan and Marcia shared an appetite for adventurous eating, and together drank deeply from the cup of life.
Dan loved spending time with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They all brought him immense joy. He taught them many things, including how to calculate Parcheesi moves without needing to count spaces (a pattern-recognition trick that showed how his mind was always working on multiple levels). He also instilled his love of baseball, and taught them that there are two types of baseball fans: those who leave, and those who stay until the last out. His family, he made clear, stayed until the end, which said as much about his optimistic nature as it did about his loyalty and perseverance.
Dan and Marcia loved spending time on Martha’s Vineyard. One of the benefits of their move to Cambridge in 1996 was easy access to their home in Oak Bluffs, and they took full advantage, going for summer and long weekends year-round. One of Dan’s delights was to map the “ancient ways” paths in the woods near their home. Occasionally, after discovering a new trail, Marcia would need to pick him up when he exited the woods unexpectedly far from home. Long before the AllTrails app, his family and visitors had Dan’s hand-drawn map to guide them.
Dan is survived by his wife, Marcia; his children, Marla Schnall (Peter), Terri (Alex Wolman), and Eric (Susannah Fox); his grandchildren, Matthew Schnall (Hannah), Kathryn Knechtli (Lucien), Elias Wolman, Scarlette Fox-Halperin, Lida Wolman, and Natasha Fox-Halperin; his great-grandchildren, Kevin Knechtli and Ryan Schnall; his brother, Morton (Diane Orentlicher); his brother- and sister-in-law, Gordon and Ilene Goldman; and his five nephews and their families.
Following a private burial on Martha’s Vineyard, a memorial will be held in the future, with details to be announced. The family suggests that donations in his honor be made to the Pension Rights Center, online at pensionrights.org/support-us, or an organization of your choice that embodies his spirit.