Bernard D. Davis papers

Bernard D. Davis (1916-1994) A.B., Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, M.D., Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, was the Chair of the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology from 1957 to 1968 and the Adele Lehman Professor of Bacterial Physiology, a subunit of the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology, from 1968 to 1984, both at Harvard Medical School. He was a microbiologist who focused throughout his career on biochemical and genetic mutations, microbial and bacterial physiology, and the impact of science on human relations. Early in his career, Davis created the penicillin enrichment method for obtaining nutritional mutants of Escherichia coli, as did Joshua Lederberg (1925-2008), independently. While at Harvard Medical School, Davis' key scientific findings included the details of the ribosome cycle; protein secretion vesicles; the dominance of susceptibility to streptomycin (due to the misreading of the genetic code); and in 1987, with colleague P.C. Tai, a unified mechanism of streptomycin killing. Later in his career, Davis also became known as a science policy advocate, interested in the controversy over recombinant DNA and genetic engineering, academic standards and affirmative action, and scientific fraud and academic misconduct.

Bernard D. Davis was born in Franklin, Massachusetts on January 7, 1916, to parents who had emigrated from Lithuania and were proprietors of a dry goods store. He received his A.B. from Harvard College in Biochemistry in 1938, and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, with the rare honor of graduating summa cum laude, in 1940. From 1938 to 1940, he also worked with the biochemist E.J. Cohn (1892-1953), and following graduation, completed a medical internship and research fellowship at Johns Hopkins University Hospital between 1940 and 1942. Davis then became a Commissioned Officer of the United States Public Health Service, initially involved with a study of high altitude tolerance in the field of aviation medicine at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Late in 1942, he began working in the laboratory of Elvin Kabat (1914-2000) at Columbia University, and then with Jules Freund (1890-1960) at the Public Health Research Institute, both in New York, New York. He was offered his own laboratory for work related to tuberculosis in 1945; he prepared for this by spending two years working under René Dubos (1901-1982) at the Rockefeller Institute, New York, New York. Following a year spent recovering from tuberculosis, Davis ran a laboratory studying the disease at Cornell University Medical College (1947), where he worked in part with David Sprinson (1910-2007). In 1954, he was appointed the head of Pharmacology at New York University College of Medicine, remaining in New York, New York. He moved back to the Boston, Massachusetts, in 1957, when he became the Chair of the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology at Harvard Medical School. He departed this role in 1968 in order to become the Adele Lehman Professor of Bacterial Physiology, a subunit of the same department; he remained in this position until his retirement in 1984.

Davis is most known for his scientific research in microbiology and bacterial physiology, focusing on the ribosome cycle, streptomycin, protein secretion vesicles, studies of Escherichia coli, bacterial membrane transport systems, and mechanisms of drug resistance and chemotherapy. His work with Werner Maas foreshadowed later findings in genetics although genetics was not his intended focus. He authored or coauthored more than 200 scientific papers. In the latter portion of his career, Davis became more involved in issues outside of the laboratory, including the role of science in culture, the ethics of genetic engineering, evolution and human diversity, the implications of affirmative action, and the defense of fellow scientists accused of fraud and misconduct. He was also in the classroom, leading a physiology course at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, between 1955 and 1960, and held visiting professorships at Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel (1985), the University of California, Berkeley (1986), and National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan (1987). Davis authored multiple editions of a new textbook for medical students, Microbiology (first edition, 1967), along with R. Dulbecco, H. Eisen, H. Ginsberg, and, initially, W.B. Wood. In his role as advocate, he published a collection of essays concerning contemporary controversies facing science and scientists, entitled Storm Over Biology: Essays On Science, Sentiment, and Public Policy, in 1986. At the time of his death, Davis had nearly completed a manuscript on the topic of accusation of scientific fraud against Dr. David Baltimore (born 1938), which was never published. In 1967, Davis was elected to the National Academy of Science, and was also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, among numerous other professional affiliations. He acted as a Fogarty Scholar at the National Institutes of Health in 1988, and received the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology in 1989. That same year, he also received the Hoechst-Roussel Award from the American Society of Microbiology.

Bernard D. Davis married Elizabeth Menzel (died 2014) in 1955. They had three children, Franklin Arthur (born 1956), Jonathan Harry (born 1958), and Katherine Judith (born 1960). Davis died on January 14, 1994, in Belmont, Massachusetts.