Peter David's paternal grandparents, Martin and Hela David, and Peter's father, Gunter, came to the United States in the 1930s after the antisemitism in Nazi Germany progressed to the point that Martin's Berlin shoestore became the target of vandalism. David was born September 23, 1956 in Fort Meade, Maryland to Gunter David and Dalia David (née Rojansky), an Israeli-born Jewish mother who had worked with DNA mappers James Watson and Francis Crick, and to whom David credits his sense of humor. He has two siblings, a brother Wally, seven years his junior, who works as an IT Systems Administrator in the financial sector, and a younger sister named Beth.