Dan had an open exploratory mind. After experiencing the disruptions in society in Melbourne during the first World War, he learnt Esperanto, explored Humanism and Rationalism, and tried to understand what was going on in the rapidly changing world around him. He remained a member and financial supporter of the Rationalist Society all his life.

He was an electrician, and studied electrical engineering, but worked most of his life as the proprietor of a successful Delicatessen and Butcher's shop in East Malvern. He was an active member of the Dairy Produce Association and took a leadership role within it.

About 1931 he purchased his first microscope, joined the Microscopical Society of Victoria, and when that society became the Microscopical Group of the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria in 1954, he became a very active member of the FNCV for the rest of his life.

Dan was a recognised authority on Victorian freshwater and marine microbiology, and his shared discoveries were welcomed, and acknowledged, by professional scientists from the Victorian Institute of Marine Sciences, the Museum of Victoria, and the CRC for Freshwater Ecology.

As well as taking a lead role in the Microscopical Group, he was also actively involved with the FNCV Nature Shows, with the Geology Group, and, with his wife Chriss, with the Marine Biology Group and the Hawthorn Junior Field Naturalists Club.

Dan, with fellow microscopist and engineer Wilfred Charles Woollard (1892-1971), designed, developed and produced the "FNCV Microscope", and more than 140 microscopes were made. In May 1964, they both received Honorary memberships of the FNCV, in recognition of their work.

Dan's infectious enthusiasm for pond life, marine life and geology, helped educate fellow Field Naturalists, and encouraged many members of the Hawthorn Junior Field Naturalists Club to pursue careers in Science. He always had something to talk about or display at meetings, and many specimens became topics of well written articles in "The Victorian Naturalist."

His understanding of electricity and magnetism, together with his interest in geology, mineralogy, and looking at slices of rock under the microscope, lead him to take a deeper interest in atoms and particle physics. Following the advent of "Tetra" drink containers in the 1960s, he devised his own conceptual tetrahedron model of alpha-particles and the atomic nucleus. Together with 'gravity particles' or 'gravitons', he could explain all the patterns and riddles of gravity, electrons, light, magnetism and mineralogy. To help explain his concepts, he built a large number of tetrahedron models of atomic nuclei; 'ping-pong' ball and wire models to explain the spinning of neucleons within these models. He shared his ideas freely with geologists, mathematicians, physicist, and other academics, and challenged them to disprove his proposals. In 1994, aged 89, frustrated with the lack of academic interest, he self-published his alternative paradigm as How to Make a Bathing Beauty out of Gravity: or How Many Coincidences Make a Possibility?