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Most of Dr. Pakter’s work dealt with issues of life and death, but she occasionally crunched numbers in search of answers to less critical questions. In 1969, for instance, she issued a report on the most popular months for getting pregnant in New York City.

She was surprised to learn that it was not spring “when a young man’s fancy turns to love,” she said, but September and October, followed in popularity by November and December. Of the 1,387,851 conceptions reported during the period, the fewest happened in spring.

The finding that “the gleam in a young man’s eye is in the fall,” she said, was “astonishing.”

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The Times remembering Dr. Jean Pakter. Fall is my favorite season.