William Conan Davis (August 22, 1926 - March 16, 2022) was a professor emeritus and was chair of natural sciences at St. Philip's College in San Antonio, Texas.
In addition to his scientific work, he was a Lutheran lay minister, served during the Korean War, and received the Purple Heart.
[4] Kince Davis was employed as a railway construction engineer and crew boss, a position that brought him threats from the Ku Klux Klan.
[6] William Davis spent time during the summers with his maternal grandfather Jonnas Franklin, who identified as a Sioux Indian and who farmed and hunted near the Okefenokee Swamp.
On one occasion Kince Davis drove his sons William and Kenneth to Tuskegee Institute (a distance of 300 miles in a Tin Lizzie) to attend a workshop with George Washington Carver and Henry Ford.
[3] Dasher High School did not teach at a college preparatory level, leaving William at a disadvantage in science and mathematics.
He isolated and extracted a dry, crystal-like powder, arabinogalactan, that produced a sticky paste when water was added to it.
[8] This water-soluble polysaccharide is found in Western Larch trees (Larix occidentalis) and other plants and is believed to have health benefits.
[9][4][8] While completing his doctorate, Davis worked with scientists at Washington State University in a variety of fields, including clinical research with Mark Adams.
[9] Davis worked as a post-doctoral fellow with Rosalyn Yalow at the Bronx Veteran's Affairs Hospital, where he learned radioimmunoassay techniques for use with diabetic patients.
[4][12][13] Using his knowledge of radioimmunoassay techniques Davis developed standardized tests for the detection of thyroxin in the blood stream.
[14] Davis was recruited as a health physicist and became head of the radioactivity department at United Medical Laboratories in Portland, Oregon.
[16] [At United Medical Laboratories] we provided analyses for doctors all over the world, and devised methods for reducing the time and cost of conducting clinical assays to develop detect concentrations of hormones and steroids in the blood such as aldosterone, estrogen, and testosterone ... We made exotic procedures routine and brought their price down.
[17] In 1972, Davis helped put on the Black Community Survival Conference, a protest against the expansion of the Emanuel Hospital.
The expansion was planned without community input and largely destroyed the commercial center of a historically black neighborhood.
[4] He worked with Maharaj K. Ticku to study the effects of picrotoxin, benzodiazepines, pentobarbital, ethanol, and other psychoactive substances on receptor binding sites.
[21][22][23][24] In 1983, Davis was hired as an instructor in the chemistry department at St. Philip's College, giving him more opportunity for teaching as well as research.
[4][26] With Lanier Byrd, Davis co-created the formula that gives a characteristic taste to Dasani water,[10][27] a product of The Coca-Cola Company.
[26] In addition to hydrology, Davis was interested in recombinant DNA and fuel cell technologies for renewable energy.
He helped to establish the Ernest Stevenson Collection of scientific books and artifacts, to be housed at the Sutton Learning Center at St. Philip's College.