Mary Perkins Mary Perkins Dame Mary Lesley Perkins, (born 14 February 1944) is co-founder of Specsavers, the British retail opticians chain. Together with her husband, co-founder and chairman Doug Perkins, Dame Mary has three children, all of whom work for Specsavers, and are eventually expected to take over the privately owned company. She attended Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol. She then went to Cardiff University to train as an optometrist. At Cardiff, she met Doug Perkins, whom she would later marry. The couple established their first business in Bristol in the 1960s. This was a chain of opticians around Bristol, which they
Perkins Professorship of Astronomy and Mathematics Perkins Professorship of Astronomy and Mathematics The Perkins Professorship of Astronomy and Mathematics is an endowed professorship established at Harvard College in 1842 by James Perkins, Jr., (1761–1822). James Perkins, Jr., was a Boston philanthropist, benefactor of the Boston Athenæum, and co-founder with his younger brother Thomas Handasyd Perkins of the Perkins School for the Blind. In his will, Perkins left $20,000 to Harvard College to establish a chair in "whatever field the President and Fellows should find the most useful". The funds were transferred to Harvard on February 20, 1842, upon the death of Perkins' wife. At that time