Though in his academic and professional life Packer specialized in highly technical subjects—such as his thesis on fluid dynamics—he felt at ease in the humanities and had a knack for explaining his own work at a layman’s level, said Ronald M. Soiefer ’75, a college friend.

“He roamed at will in my areas of expertise,” he said. “And yet the rest of us could step gingerly at best in his areas.”

This past summer, Packer and his wife took their children on a trip sponsored by the Harvard Alumni Association. Along with graduate students and other Harvard families, they listened to lectures on the Illiad and the Odyssey as they toured the Aegean Sea.

He also organized popular birthday parties for his two children—once taking young guests to sit in the cockpit of a private plane, another time bringing a bulldozer to his neighborhood so the guests could ride along as it was driven up and down the driveway.

“Some people have magicians come,” Soiefer said. “[But] they had a science teacher come, show them different scientific things, how fluids would change colors, turn to gases, how magnetism worked.”

Family and friends held a memorial service for Packer in Scarsdale, New York, where he and his wife had gone in recent years to listen to choral music. A second memorial at a Merrill Lynch office in New Jersey brought out about 600 people.

Packer is survived by his wife, Rekha, and his two children, Sarita and Jonathan.