Vera Alexander was born in 1932 to Paul Alexander, a Jewish father, and Irene Alexander, a Catholic mother, in Budapest, Hungary.

Her family fled Hungary to England in 1939 just as the forces of darkness advanced on Eastern Europe. They settled in the forested hills of Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, where 7-year-old Alexander trained her terrier Tigger to pull a cart, selling duck eggs to neighbors during the war. As a teenager she enjoyed riding through the countryside on a pony named Cobweb, her first of many horses. She also developed a life-long love of the musical arts where she earned firsts in music composition at the Berkhamsted School for Girls and passed the Royal Academy of Music (London) piano performance exam.

When her family emigrated to Princeton, New Jersey, after the war, Alexander enrolled in the University of Wisconsin Madison’s Animal Husbandry program. However, she fell in with the biology crowd when she joined the Wisconsin Hoofers climbing club and changed her degree to earn a B.S. in biology and an M.S. in zoology. She married fellow Hoofer student Richard (Dick) Dugdale. They went on to have two children, Graham Dugdale and Elizabeth Dugdale.

Alexander and Dugdale were driven scientists who dreamed of adventure. After multiple research trips to Alaska, they moved to Fairbanks in 1963 but divorced several years later. In 1965, Alexander was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She pursued field science, became the director of Institute of Marine Science, and the first dean of the College of Ocean Sciences and Fisheries. 

During her graduate years, she expanded specialization in scientific research evolved with ecological concepts. This proved a critical time for shifting marine science understanding across national boundaries and into the global commons. Anecdotes about her research trailer at the UAF Toolik Field Station north of the Brooks Range now waver between legendary and mythological.

In the era before Zoom and virtual communications, she was an Alaska Airlines Million Miler, testifying in-person before committees of Congress, the National Science Foundation, etc. then traveling internationally to advocate for marine science issues.

Respected in her field, she was invited to pursue her interests as a visiting professor at the University of Turku, Finland, and at the National Institute of Polar Research, Tokyo, Japan.

Early in Alexander’s administrative years, marine ecology became a significant factor in international policies of ocean access and marine life harvest defining geo-political boundaries, exploitation and regulation of the “International Ocean Commons” by indigenous, public, and private interests.

Early scientific field research and maritime traditions excluded women; females weren’t accommodated in field stations nor aboard research vessels. Alexander and her generation challenged and changed those obstacles.

Among her many achievements were 16 years of service on the Marine Mammal Commission, 12 years on the International Scientific Steering Committee of the Census of Marine Life, service as a founder, delegate and chair of the North Pacific Marine Science Organization, and the development and launch of the Research Vessel Sikuliaq.

Alexander authored or co-authored over 70 papers published in refereed literature and received many honors, including as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Arctic Institute of North America, and the Explorers Club.

Throughout her life, many dogs, cats and horses adopted her and she in turn nurtured them. She returned to her love of the piano by studying with James Johnson, music professor, showing off her skills on the concert stage and as the first accompanist for the Fairbanks Light Opera Theatre (FLOT). She was also a devoted member of College Rotary and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fairbanks.

At UAF, Dr. Alexander became:

•  Director of UAF Institute of Marine Science 1980-1987
• the first Dean of the UAF College of Ocean Sciences and Fisheries 1987-2016
• Director of the Coastal Marine Institute (SFOS)
• University of Alaska marine representative to the National Association of Land and Sea Grant colleges
• United States National Research Council Committee member
• Treasurer, Board of Directors of the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States
• Chair of the National Science Foundation’s Committee on Ocean Sciences
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Science Advisory Board member and the Ocean Research Advisory panel, and as Pollock Conservation Cooperative Research Center Director
• Presidential appointee to the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission on which she served 16 years
• 12 years on the International Scientific Steering Committee of the Census of Marine Life, service as a founder, one of two U.S. delegates, and as chair of the North Pacific Marine Science Organization

The 2012 launch of the National Science Foundation’s first ice strengthened Research Vessel Sikuliaq (Inupiat for young sea ice) symbolized Alexander’s tenacity and advocacy for an Arctic specific marine research vessel

In recognition of her international accomplishments the Hokkaido University awarded her an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 2000.