Nobel winner credits MagLab’s Davidson for breakthrough

Nobel winner credits MagLab’s Davidson for breakthrough


"Call it the MagLab’s Nobel Prize by proxy – and another feather in the cap of Florida State University scientist Mike Davidson.
The Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded Oct. 7 to three researchers for their work in developing the first microscopes that can examine individual molecules in detail. The lead researcher, Eric Betzig, praised Davidson with providing the project’s “missing link” moment during a 2005 visit to Tallahassee.
Betzig, 54, is a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Research Campus in Ashburn, Va. He shared the 2014 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with William Moerner of Stanford University and Stefan Hell, of Germany. The three men will split $1.4 million and receive their Nobel Prize medals in December in Stockholm, Sweden.
“Mike is one of my idols,” Betzig said Monday by telephone. “Thanks to him, Harald (Hess, research partner) and I got out of the scientific wilderness and did the work that led to the Nobel Prize.”
Greg Boebinger, director of the MagLab, said Betzig’s Nobel Prize was the “first ever” with a connection to the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory.
“This is absolutely spectacular,” Boebinger said. “Mike and I had been talking (Oct. 6) about how Eric would win the Nobel Prize someday. But we didn’t know it would be (the next day).”
Davidson, 63, has been with the MagLab since its opening in 1994. He is an expert in microscopy, which is using high-powered microscopes to view molecules."