It was with great sadness that we learned of the death of one of scanning probe microscopy’s quiet heroes, Dr David Post Allison, at the beginning of January this year.
Dr Allison was a committed microscopist, working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the early days of his career and then at the University of Tennessee. In a lifetime dedicated to research he was directly responsible for more than 100 publications – a number of which are available to view via Research Gate.
He is particularly fondly remembered within NuNano as he was a brilliant friend and colleague of our co-founders Prof. Mervyn Miles and Prof. Heinrich Hoeber. Together the three of them decided to set up their own conference series at the end of the 1990s. This series became the International Scanning Probe Microscopy (ISPM) series, now one of the central pillars of the annual microscopy conference season.
Prof. Mervyn Miles remembers: “The ISPM all started in 1999 – 25 years ago now – with the first event organised by myself, Dave and Heinrich.
I first met Dave when he showed me around the bioSTM activities at ORNL in 1993 - so I have known him for 30 years. From then on, we often met at conferences and the wonderful Fourmentin-Guillbert annual workshops in an abbey outside Paris.
We also used to meet at the strange series of “Scanning Microscopy” conferences run by Om Johari out of Chicago. It was when these conferences ended, owing to Om’s ill health, Dave, Heinrich and I decided to start our own conference series, which became ISPM.
Dave was a great scientist; he was wise but always fun, sometimes with outrageous humour! He was a real friend!”
We share our condolences with Dave’s family and friends and celebrate the work he continued to engage in throughout his life.
Below is a video that Prof. Mervyn Miles compiled in honour of David Allison