Tribute to Ron Milligan

I was sad to learn that my friend, Ron Milligan, passed away earlier this year. I first met Ron when we joined the MRC LMB in Cambridge around the same time in the late seventies as naïve but enthusiastic youngsters who had recently finished our undergrad degrees and were excited to be getting our start in molecular biology research. In some ways the LMB back then was a little bit intimidating for youngsters like us, and while the more senior scientists were friendly and supportive, it wasn’t easy to find peers of the same age to chat with. So, it was indeed fortunate for me that Milligan worked in Nigel Unwin’s lab, right across the hall from our lab, allowing us to become friends who could talk freely about our respective scientific projects and how we were getting on at the LMB.

Just to give a hint of the flavor of how Ron and I typically interacted in those days. At the time I was working on the biochemistry of myosin motors with Jake Kendrick-Jones for my PhD thesis and some of the myosins from non-muscle cells that we were studying were rather unstable – a problem that I addressed by working through the night every couple of weeks to complete the requisite protein purification and assay before denaturation set in! It would have been nice to be able to celebrate with a self-congratulatory pint of Abbot ale for being such a hard-working student - but no such luck! Virtually every time I worked through the night, I would find Milligan working the same long hours and as far as I could tell he would do the self-same thing every day! I formed the opinion that he was so excited by the science he was doing that he’d adapted to go without sleep so he could just get on with his project – it was impressive to say the least! During those late nights I would typically find him pouring over electron density maps of nuclear pore complexes or ribosomes, often in deep discussion with Nigel, who seemed to maintain the same insane but impressive work schedule as Ron, or examining EM grids crouched over the Unwin lab Philips EM400 (which he generously and patiently taught me to use for less sophisticated specimens - i.e. negative stained myosin filaments). It was always amusing to occasionally find Ron and Nigel armed with butterfly nets frantically chasing escaped lizards down the hall and pursuing them down into the basement- as I recall, they used lizards because their oocytes contained natural "semi-crystalline" 2D arrays of ribosomes suitable for low dose EM for 3D reconstructions. In many of those late evenings Ron and I would often sneak off to the nearby Frank Lee Pub for a couple of pints of Green King Ale and a chat about how things were progressing before heading back to the lab. They were usually happy and fun times, but on those evenings when I was down and struggling with research, Ron would keep me on track and motivated with just the right balance of blunt criticism, advice and encouragement - always delivered with his characteristic smiling, Irish sense of humor. A true friend!

In those days, Milligan’s scientific research was supervised by Nigel, but he had not yet started his thesis research – that came later when they moved to Stanford where Ron obtained his PhD under Nigel’s mentorship. Subsequently when Nigel moved back to the LMB, Ron moved to Scripps Department of Cell Biology where he pursued a brilliant scientific career as an independent investigator - as is well-known and much appreciated in the fields of cell biology and structural biology. Naturally we didn’t see as much of each other as we had at the LMB although we did keep in touch. For example, I invited him to speak at a Gordon Conference that I chaired while he hosted me for a research talk at Scripps; we met again at a pre-50th anniversary LMB reunion party hosted by Nigel at the “golden helix”; and whenever we bumped into each other at the annual ASCB meetings we would typically go off for a beer and chat together at a nearby bar. It was always just like the old times - despite his very impressive scientific accomplishments, Milligan seemed to me to be exactly the same person who had befriended me all those years ago at the LMB, i.e. intelligent, enthusiastic, insightful, amusing and incredibly modest and always speaking in that gentle Irish brogue and wearing that unforgettable smile!

Thanks for keeping our thoughts about Ron rolling

Ron has been a great friend over the years, we met in 1980 when I responded to an advertisement for a roommate in a shared house in Cambridge and it turned out that
Ron was the person leaving the house to go to Stanford with his Lab. We overlapped by a few weeks during which we went to the Cambridge folk festival together and formed a friendship that continued for the next year via correspondence letters.

I later visited him in California. We traveled down to LA during my stay and even did a parachute jump in Antioch which involved a full day of training before the jump and sleeping out on the target zone the night before the jump.

I got a job during that visit and moved out in 1982 to live in California. Ron was my only contact at the time. he let me stay in his house along with his friends while I found my feet.
We had good times together while he lived in the Bay Area, he let me keep my windsurfer in his garage so I was always in and out. Ron's house was always a meeting place and he had some memorable costume parties during Halloweeen there.

A few years later he moved to San Diego. When we met up we would pick up immediately our easygoing friendship and our shared love of nature and science, mixed in with a lot of irreverent humour which came to Ron naturally.

in 1989 I visited him and he introduced me to a fellow scientist, Cristina, whom he had met in Heidelberg. Didn't know it at the time but I was later to marry Cristina and we now have a daughter who is finishing her PhD in Genetics at Cambridge (full circle)

Ron has been a huge influence in my life stepping in to steer the ship at critical moments. If I didn't answer that Ad in Cambridge, I am sure my life would have been very different. So thankyou Ron, for being a guiding light and being such a great friend.

I was very worried along with everyone else when he was diagnosed with cancer but amazed at his resilience and ability to stay positive through all his difficult treatments. I must admit to being one of the people that assumed that he would conquer everything thrown at him and was not prepared for his passing at such short notice. My consolation to this is that he did manage to outlast all the predictions and become a Grandad, spending a full week with his granddaughter in March of this year. He will be very much missed by myself and Cristina.

Ron was our good neighbor, a friendly Irishman, dear husband, father and recent grandfather, a scientific marvel, beautiful potter and comfortably humble.

He, his talents and humor will be missed by many.