Nuclear Medicine and Biology 43 (2016) 189–190
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Nuclear Medicine and Biology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/nucmedbio
Obituary
Alan Davison, FRS
It is with sorrow we inform the community that after a prolonged illness Professor (emeritus) Alan Davison of MIT passed away at his home on Saturday, November 15th, 2015. Alan was 79 years of age. Alan or AD, as he was widely known to his students and colleagues, was born in Ealing, England in 1936. A proud Welshman, he obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Swansea in Wales; a talented and inquisitive chemist from the beginning, he joined the laboratory of future Nobel laureate Professor Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson at Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, UK. Alan was awarded the PhD and DIC degrees in 1962. He then relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was appointed Instructor in Chemistry at Harvard University in 1962. He moved two years later to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Chemistry. He remained at MIT for the rest of his professional career as a gifted educator, an accomplished researcher and a mentor to many gifted chemists in inorganic, organometallic and radiopharmaceutical chemistry. Alan’s talents were recognized early with an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1967–1969), as well as a tenured professorship at MIT in 1974. Later he would also receive an Honorary Fellowship in 1990 from his alma mater, University College of Swansea, UK, and in the same year his team won the Herbert M. Stauffer award from the American College of Radiology. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2000. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nucmedbio.2015.11.006 0969-8051/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Alan’s contributions to chemistry ranged through classical inorganic chemistry, organometallic chemistry, bioinorganic chemistry to radiopharmaceutical chemistry. His particular interest in the element technetium would transform our basic chemical and structural understanding of this transition metal. Along with other researchers in the field, working closely with fellow Welshman the late Alun Jones, Professor of Radiology at the Harvard Medical School, their pioneering research would elucidate the fundamental and varied chemistry of technetium and the application to nuclear medicine of its short-lived metastable isotope technetium-99m, thereby transforming the development of technetium radiopharmaceuticals from trial-and-error to rational design. Using the long-lived isotope Tc-99 and standard inorganic synthetic chemistry approaches plus X-ray crystallography, they elucidated and identified the varied characteristics of this element in its different oxidation states, discovering and well-characterizing numerous compound classes. Among these were technetium complexes with the O = Tc(V) core, exemplified by oxotechnetium(V) bis(thiomercaptoacetate) published in 1978, and the basis of TcVO-ethylcysteinedimer (Tc VO(ECD); Technetium-99m-Bicisate), Tc VOMAG3 (Technetium-99m-Mertiatide), Tc VOTRODAT and TcVO-Technepine. Their collaboration with Klaus Biemann and Catherine Costello (then at MIT), pioneered the application of field desorption mass spectrometry (FDMS) to coordination compounds. The
190
Obituary / Nuclear Medicine and Biology 43 (2016) 189–190
Davison/Jones partnership would also identify low valent Tc(I) species, including the lipophilic cations of [hexakis(isonitrile)Tc(I)], which led to [hexakis(2-methoxy-2-methylpropyl)isonitrile)Tc(I)] (Technetium 99m sestaMIBI), used worldwide in clinical nuclear cardiology to detect myocardial perfusion defects. This imaging agent has been used in tens of millions of human studies and is not only the standard in nuclear cardiology, but has also found applications in breast-cancer imaging and cancer drug resistance studies. In 2009, Michael Abrams, Alan Davison and Alun Jones received the Society of Nuclear Medicine’s George Charles de Hevesy Nuclear Pioneer Award. Other awards recognizing Alan’s contributions to science and chemistry include the Paul C. Aebersold award (1993) for outstanding achievements in basic sciences applied to nuclear medicine (SNM), a gold medal of the University of Padua, Italy (1998) for fundamental contributions to the development of technetium chemistry and radiopharmaceuticals, the Ernest H. Swift Lectureship at Caltech (1999), both the American Chemical Society Carothers Award for outstanding contributions and advances in industrial applications of chemistry and the ACS
Award for Creative Invention in 2006, as well as the Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine, also in 2006. Throughout all his success, AD remained the same unassuming scientist with a generous spirit coupled to wit and humor. He mentored a generation of scientists and chemists with an open-door policy, and guided many on their paths to success. Members of the Society of Radiopharmaceutical Scientists and the Editorial Board and others will miss his good humor, his chemical intuition, and his thoughtful scientific counsel.
Michael J. Abrams James Kronauge John Lister-James Ashfaq Mahmood⁎ Terrence Nicholson Chris Orvig ⁎ Corresponding author E-mail address: [email protected]
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Nuclear Medicine and Biology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/nucmedbio
Obituary
Alan Davison, FRS
It is with sorrow we inform the community that after a prolonged illness Professor (emeritus) Alan Davison of MIT passed away at his home on Saturday, November 15th, 2015. Alan was 79 years of age. Alan or AD, as he was widely known to his students and colleagues, was born in Ealing, England in 1936. A proud Welshman, he obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Swansea in Wales; a talented and inquisitive chemist from the beginning, he joined the laboratory of future Nobel laureate Professor Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson at Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, UK. Alan was awarded the PhD and DIC degrees in 1962. He then relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was appointed Instructor in Chemistry at Harvard University in 1962. He moved two years later to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Chemistry. He remained at MIT for the rest of his professional career as a gifted educator, an accomplished researcher and a mentor to many gifted chemists in inorganic, organometallic and radiopharmaceutical chemistry. Alan’s talents were recognized early with an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1967–1969), as well as a tenured professorship at MIT in 1974. Later he would also receive an Honorary Fellowship in 1990 from his alma mater, University College of Swansea, UK, and in the same year his team won the Herbert M. Stauffer award from the American College of Radiology. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2000. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nucmedbio.2015.11.006 0969-8051/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Alan’s contributions to chemistry ranged through classical inorganic chemistry, organometallic chemistry, bioinorganic chemistry to radiopharmaceutical chemistry. His particular interest in the element technetium would transform our basic chemical and structural understanding of this transition metal. Along with other researchers in the field, working closely with fellow Welshman the late Alun Jones, Professor of Radiology at the Harvard Medical School, their pioneering research would elucidate the fundamental and varied chemistry of technetium and the application to nuclear medicine of its short-lived metastable isotope technetium-99m, thereby transforming the development of technetium radiopharmaceuticals from trial-and-error to rational design. Using the long-lived isotope Tc-99 and standard inorganic synthetic chemistry approaches plus X-ray crystallography, they elucidated and identified the varied characteristics of this element in its different oxidation states, discovering and well-characterizing numerous compound classes. Among these were technetium complexes with the O = Tc(V) core, exemplified by oxotechnetium(V) bis(thiomercaptoacetate) published in 1978, and the basis of TcVO-ethylcysteinedimer (Tc VO(ECD); Technetium-99m-Bicisate), Tc VOMAG3 (Technetium-99m-Mertiatide), Tc VOTRODAT and TcVO-Technepine. Their collaboration with Klaus Biemann and Catherine Costello (then at MIT), pioneered the application of field desorption mass spectrometry (FDMS) to coordination compounds. The
190
Obituary / Nuclear Medicine and Biology 43 (2016) 189–190
Davison/Jones partnership would also identify low valent Tc(I) species, including the lipophilic cations of [hexakis(isonitrile)Tc(I)], which led to [hexakis(2-methoxy-2-methylpropyl)isonitrile)Tc(I)] (Technetium 99m sestaMIBI), used worldwide in clinical nuclear cardiology to detect myocardial perfusion defects. This imaging agent has been used in tens of millions of human studies and is not only the standard in nuclear cardiology, but has also found applications in breast-cancer imaging and cancer drug resistance studies. In 2009, Michael Abrams, Alan Davison and Alun Jones received the Society of Nuclear Medicine’s George Charles de Hevesy Nuclear Pioneer Award. Other awards recognizing Alan’s contributions to science and chemistry include the Paul C. Aebersold award (1993) for outstanding achievements in basic sciences applied to nuclear medicine (SNM), a gold medal of the University of Padua, Italy (1998) for fundamental contributions to the development of technetium chemistry and radiopharmaceuticals, the Ernest H. Swift Lectureship at Caltech (1999), both the American Chemical Society Carothers Award for outstanding contributions and advances in industrial applications of chemistry and the ACS
Award for Creative Invention in 2006, as well as the Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine, also in 2006. Throughout all his success, AD remained the same unassuming scientist with a generous spirit coupled to wit and humor. He mentored a generation of scientists and chemists with an open-door policy, and guided many on their paths to success. Members of the Society of Radiopharmaceutical Scientists and the Editorial Board and others will miss his good humor, his chemical intuition, and his thoughtful scientific counsel.
Michael J. Abrams James Kronauge John Lister-James Ashfaq Mahmood⁎ Terrence Nicholson Chris Orvig ⁎ Corresponding author E-mail address: [email protected]
