Mom Shyamala Gopalan and Dad Donald J. Harris
Shyamala Gopalan Born in South India in 1938 and Donald J. Harris Born in Jamaica in the same year.
According to New York TimesThey met in 1962 while earning their doctorates at the University of California, Berkeley and as members of the African-American Association study group. They married the following year and welcomed daughters Kamala Harris in 1964 and Maya Harris in 1967.
“They fell in love in that American way, while marching together for justice in the civil rights movement in the 1960s,” Harris said in her speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
However, her parents later divorced.
Harris wrote in her book: “I knew they loved each other very much, but they seemed to have become like oil and water.” The Truths We Carry. “By the time I was five years old, the bond had collapsed under the weight of incompatibility.”
While Harris wrote that her father “remained a part of our lives” after the divorce, she noted that “it was my mother who really raised us.”
After serving as a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Donald joined Stanford University as professor emeritus of economics, according to his School biography.
Shyamala, who died in 2009 at the age of 70, was a breast cancer researcher. “Her work in isolating and characterizing the progesterone receptor gene transformed the medical establishment’s understanding of the response of breast tissue to hormones.”
A source