Alan Marshall: A Scientist and a Gentleman
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Defender of Science
Back in his Tallahassee home (dubbed “the White House” by friends and colleagues), Marshall is playing host to students and scientists from his lab. This is a weekly occurrence chez Marshall, a group meeting that is part mixer, part team-building exercise, part training. Each week, one lucky researcher makes a presentation on recent work that is scrutinized and debated by the rest of the group.
In the hot seat this particular evening in the summer of 2007 is postdoctoral associate Sudarslal Nair, presenting his research on proteins.
Example of a mass spectrum:
Detail from an analysis of crude oil.
His 6-foot-1-inch frame splayed across his beige armchair, Marshall settles in as if for a show. During Sair’s PowerPoint, he interrupts frequently, pressing for details, pointing out holes, cracking jokes and laughing at them with his gruff, throaty laugh. Though Marshall looks very much the part of the distinguished scientist, there’s a bit of Groucho Marx mixed in … the unruly hair and eyebrows, the moustache, the humorous asides. It’s not hard to picture a cigar dangling from the corner of his mouth.
Some of Nair’s answers prompt Marshall to nod approvingly. Other times he is less satisfied, voicing concern about data or methodology before prodding “Onward!” with a wave of a hand. Marshall’s questions become most pointed when he wants to know why Nair chose FT-ICR to investigate his problem. The greatest strength of this tool is its high resolution and sensitivity; it is very good at telling molecules apart by mass, even when there is not much difference between them. (Each type of molecule has a unique mass, determined by its chemical make-up; FT-ICR machines measure all the molecules in a sample and then count them all up to determine what particles are in there, and how much of each.) The results are displayed in a mass spectrum that resembles the peaks and valleys of a heart monitor and shows what molecules are in a sample, and in what quantity.
“You’re fishing here. We don’t like to fish. It takes forever.”
“We’re an ICR lab; why are we doing this?”
“So I say again: What good does it do to have high mass accuracy?”
Nair seems to sweat a little. But the twinkle never leaves Marshall’s blue eyes, nor does a smile leave his face. He’s not making sport of Nair (a valued team member who will soon advance to his first faculty position); he just finds the science so much fun. He loves what he does and does what he loves. The laugh lines on his face are deep.
Nair knows Marshall too well to take it personally and calls him a “true scientist and a great human.”
He has a servant’s heart in a sense, in that he feels an obligation to his family and doing a good job to his profession.
“I am really happy that I got a mentor like Dr. Marshall,” says Nair. “He never pressures anybody. Still, all of us work to our maximum potential to produce good data. I never saw him angry with any of his lab members or criticize unnecessarily. This attitude substantially improves the lab atmosphere and increases productivity.”
Marshall interrogated Nair like a seasoned trial lawyer not just to make a better scientist out of him, but to defend a technique on which he has built his career. FT-ICR is an extremely powerful tool that has shown researchers how drugs bind to proteins, what oil deposits are worth drilling in, and could even track down terrorists by fingerprinting the compounds used in chemical or biological warfare. But applying the technique to a topic that doesn’t really benefit from its high accuracy and resolution is a bit like using an MRI machine to diagnose a cold; it’s a waste of a money, talent and skill that advances neither science in general nor FT-ICR as a field.
“We want to make sure we’re working on problems that require it,” said Marshall. “If there’s a cheaper way of doing it, we should be doing it that way.”
Marshall has always felt a deep responsibility and diligence toward the things and people he values, says his wife of 42 years, lawyer Marilyn Marshall. He always came home to eat dinner with his wife and children, now adults. And after the dishes, he often turned around and went back to the office.
“He has a servant’s heart in a sense,” she said, “in that he feels an obligation to his family and doing a good job to his profession.”
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