Thread by @DavidCranmerUn1

University of Florida - Wikipedia

Florida Women's Hall of Fame member Maryly Van Leer became the first woman to receive from the University of Florida a master's degree in engineering. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universit…

Maryly Van Leer Peck was born on June 29, 1930, in Washington, D.C. She was the second child, and only daughter, of Blake Ragsdale Van Leer and Ella Lillian Wall Van Leer.

From 1932 to 1937, Blake Van Leer was a Dean at the University of Florida.

In 1946 Van Leer was appointed

as a member to The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization who had a focus to work against racism through influential statements on race.

The first General Conference took place from 19 November to 10 December 1946, and elected Dr. Julian Huxley to

Director-General. U.S. Colonel, university president and civil rights advocate Dr. Blake R. Van Leer joined as a member as well.

In 1912 Huxley was asked by Edgar Odell Lovett to set up the Department of Biology at the newly created Rice Institute (now Rice University) in

Houston, Texas, which he accepted, planning to start the following year. Huxley made an exploratory trip to the United States in September 1912, visiting a number of leading universities as well as the Rice Institute. At T. H. Morgan's fly lab (Columbia University) he invited

H. J. Muller to join him at Rice. Muller agreed to be his deputy, hurried to complete his PhD and moved to Houston for the beginning of the 1915–1916 academic year. At Rice, Muller taught biology and continued Drosophila lab work.

Muller worked as an adviser in the

Manhattan Project (though he did not know that was what it was), as well as a study of the mutational effects of radar. Muller's appointment was ended after the 1944–1945 academic year, and despite difficulties stemming from his socialist political activities, he found a position

as professor of zoology at Indiana University. Here, he lived in a Dutch Colonial Revival house in Bloomington's Elm Heights neighborhood.

In 1946, Muller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, "for the discovery that mutations can be induced by X-rays".

The Nobel Prize, in the wake of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, focused public attention on a subject Muller had been publicizing for two decades - the dangers of radiation. In 1952, nuclear fallout became a public issue; since Operation Crossroads, more and more

evidence had been leaking out about radiation sickness and death caused by nuclear testing.

Van Leer also founded Southern Polytechnic State University while president of Georgia Tech. The university merged into Kennesaw State University in 2015.

The college's first president,

Dr. Stephen R. Cheshier of Purdue University, was named in that same year.

Robert Malone has served as director of clinical affairs for Avancer Group, assistant professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore school of medicine, and an adjunct associate professor of

biotechnology at Kennesaw State University.

Until 2020, Malone was chief medical officer at Alchem Laboratories, a Florida pharmaceutical company.

Alachua faced another downturn with the closing of Copeland Sausage in 1976, and by the 1980s the buildings and businesses on

Main Street were in poor shape. A concerted effort by the citizens and local government of Alachua focused on rehabilitating Downtown, and the construction of Progress Corporate Park with the University of Florida led to the creation of the UF Innovate Sid Martin Biotech

Incubator which has resulted in the formation of one of the State's largest bio and life science business sectors.

UF Innovate | Accelerate @ Sid Martin Biotech (formerly known as Sid Martin Biotechnology Development Institute) was officially founded on July 2, 1990, by the

Florida Legislature. It was named after Sid Martin, a member of the Florida House of Representatives, in recognition of his commitment to the state of Florida and the University of Florida.

Much of this research park was a product of the vision of former University of Florida

President, Robert Q. Marston.

While studying at Oxford's Lincoln College, Marston worked under Nobel Prize-winner Howard Florey, Norman Heatley and other scientists from the research team that developed penicillin as the first antibiotic, and graduated with a degree in research

science.

After completing his internship at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, and a one-year residency at Vanderbilt University Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, Marston joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a medical researcher with the

Armed Forces Special Weapons Project.

During his last year as the NIH director, Marston became embroiled in a funding controversy with the Nixon administration, which wanted to place greater funding emphasis on a "war on cancer."

Marston was appointed to the corporate boards of

the Hospital Corporation of America, Johnson & Johnson, and Wackenhut.

The Marston Science Library, often called Marston, is the science and engineering library of the University of Florida located in Gainesville, Florida, and is administered by the university's

George A. Smathers Libraries system.

In 1963, Gar Wood sold Fisher Island to a development group that included local Key Biscayne millionaire Bebe Rebozo, Miami native and United States Senator George Smathers and then former U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon, who had promised

to leave politics. During his subsequent presidency from 1968–1973, and during the Watergate scandal, Nixon maintained a home on nearby Key Biscayne known as the "Key Biscayne Whitehouse" that was the former residence of Senator Smathers and next door to Rebozo, but none of the

three ever resided on Fisher Island.

Smathers sold Nixon his Key Biscayne home which became famous as Nixon's "Florida White House". Smathers was a childhood friend of Phil Graham, a fellow Floridian and half-brother to Bob Graham, Florida Governor (1979 – 1987) and

United States Senator (1987 – 2005). Phil Graham would later become the publisher of The Washington Post. Bill Nelson, U.S. Senator from Florida from 2001 to 2019, was a summer intern in Smathers's office in 1961–1962 and remained close to the Smathers family throughout his

career.

In 1954, Zapata Off-Shore Company was formed as a subsidiary of Zapata Oil, with Bush as president of the new company. He raised some startup money from Eugene Meyer, publisher of the Washington Post, and his son-in-law, Philip Graham.