FSU Researcher

http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2015/12/25/fsu-groundbreaking-researcher-davidson-dies/77910748/


Michael Davidson, a Florida State University researcher whose ground-breaking work helped advance medical research and earned FSU millions of dollars, died Christmas Eve.
Davidson, who was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in March 2014, died at his home in the San Luis Ridge neighborhood. He was 65.
Davidson was one of the first researchers assigned to FSU’s National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, when it opened in 1994. He was an expert in microscopy, a discipline that uses high-powered microscopes to view atoms and molecules.
Davidson became nationally famous in the late 1990s for emblazoning neckties and other products with colorful images of molecules of vitamins, alcoholic beverages, ice cream and moon rocks. The sales earned FSU $2 million in royalties.
Davidson went on to establish a multi-million dollar business of creating educational websites and testing state-of-the-art microscopes for manufacturers. His work in those fields earned FSU more than $8 million.
He also mentored hundreds of young scientists, hiring them as assistants in his lab and launching them into careers of their own.
“The caliber of Mike’s microscopy research was known internationally,” said Mag Lab director Greg Boebinger. “But perhaps even more than that, Mike took pride in the many students he brought back into higher education, thereby launching their scientific and technical careers and building a legacy that will live on for generations.”
One of Davidson’s chief contributions to microscopy was his work with fluorescent proteins, a process in which proteins are colored and tracked within cells to learn their behavior. By learning more about cell biology, scientists learn more about how to improve medical treatment and cure diseases such as cancer.
Though the process was originally developed by California scientist Roger Tsien, Davidson became one of the leading practitioners and a frequent collaborator with Tsien.
Davidson’s work was praised at the 2014 Nobel Prize awards by Eric Betzig, a Virginia physicist who was one of three men who shared that year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry. In 2005, Betzig and a colleague spent several days in Tallahassee discussing fluorescent proteins with Davidson. Betzig said those meetings informed his future work and led to his Nobel Prize for super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.
“Mike really is one of my idols,” Betzig said in a 2014 interview. “Thanks to him, (my colleague) and I got out of the scientific wilderness and it led to the (Nobel) prize.”
Davidson published 110 papers in scholarly journals. Though he had removed himself from active research over the past year as his illness worsened, he was still “refereeing” papers written by others for scientific journals.
A native of Atlanta, Davidson earned degrees in chemistry and biology from Georgia State University. He came to FSU in 1981 to pursue a Ph.D. in molecular biology. But wearying of a grad student’s poverty, he quit to start a business chrome-plating antique cars. He was eventually wooed back to FSU and discovered microscopy. But he never got his Ph.D.
Which explained his mentoring of others. Davidson liked to hire students who had “screwed up,” he said, looking for students who had partied too hard or struggled to make good grades or gone into other fields rather than complete their graduate degrees. He hired them at good salaries to work in his lab, pushing them with his gruff, demanding personality to do research and write papers that allowed them to return to graduate school or earn jobs with top research corporations.
Eric Clark spent 10 years as a nurse before Davidson hired him to pursue his passion for computers and graphics art. Clark spent 16 years as Davidson’s chief assistant and close friend, and continues to oversee the educational websites Davidson established.
“The one thing I want people to remember about Mike is he helped so many people,” said Clark, the Mag Lab’s research coordinator and applications developer. “He was the king of giving people a second chance.”
Clark said at the recent American Cell Biology conference in San Diego, most of his time was spent answering questions about the ailing Davidson.
“Mike helped an enormous amount of people in the industry; everyone had the same kind of story,” Clark said. “Mike was a rock star in the scientific community. (His death) is a big loss.”
Davidson is survived by his wife of 14 years, Pam Davidson; a daughter from a previous marriage, Misty Burch; and a granddaughter, Destiny Ashley.