Dr. Lloyd Mumbauer Beidler Jr.

Dr. Lloyd M. Beidler Jr. Dr. Lloyd Mumbauer Beidler Jr., 81, who had retired as a professor of biological sciences at Florida State University, died Thursday, Aug. 7, 2003. He is survived by his wife, Mary Lou Beidler of Tallahassee. A tribute to Dr. Beidler's life will be at 3:30 p.m. EDT Saturday at the Workmeister Humanities Reading Room of Dodd Hall at Florida State University. Family will receive friends immediately following the service at Dodd Hall. Memorial contributions may be made to The Lloyd Beidler Fellowship, c/o FSU Foundation, 225 University Center, Building C, Suite 3100, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2660. Lloyd was born in Allentown, Pa., on Jan. 17, 1922. He was the third of three children and his father was a railroad clerk. Both of his parents were descendants of German immigrants in the Allentown area in the 18th century. Lloyd attended a small, rural elementary school and graduated with honors from South Whitehall Consolidated High School in 1939. Lloyd enrolled at Mulenberg College, a Lutheran school in Allentown where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics in 1943. He entered graduate school at Johns Hopkins University where he met Mary Lou, who became his loving wife and companion of 56 years. After obtaining his doctorate in molecular biophysics at Johns Hopkins, he accepted a position on the faculty of Florida State University in Tallahassee. It was here where Lloyd and Mary Lou began a family and built their own home of 46 years on a modest 15 acre farm, where he reared six children with the same dedication and veracity that he provided to his students at the university. He was a teacher and diplomat in all aspects of his life and touched the lives of all that he met. His success as a father and academic is evidenced by the remarkable success of his children and students. During Lloyd's tenure at Florida State, he was an innovative research scientist and inspirational teacher to many students, post doctorates and colleagues. His reputation as a teacher and scientist preceded him around the world, resulting in a lecture and consultation as visiting scientist at the invitation of many countries. Some of his major accomplishments included American Physiological Society's Bowditch Lectureship for 1959; appointment by John F. Kennedy as the Science Coordinator of U.S. Science Exhibits for the Seattle Worlds Fair in 1961; co-founded, with Dan Kenshalo, the psychobiology program at FSU in 1965; Honorary Doctor of Law degree from Muhlenberg College in 1969; FSU's Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professorship in 1971; election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1974; American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1975; Resolution of Commendation from Florida's House of Representatives and Senate in 1987; recipient of the National Institutes of Health Javits Neuroscience Award; served on the nominating committee for the Nobel Prize Award; Board of Directors of the Museum of Electricity; and a member of the Advisory Council of the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. The family will always remember him as a loving and dedicated husband and father and as the greatest man they ever knew. He is greatly missed. Other survivors include five sons, Allan Lloyd Beidler of Raleigh, N.C., Stephen Paul Beidler of Lady Lake, David Dennis Beidler of Roanoke, Va., John Lewis Beidler of Tallahassee and Christopher Anthony Beidler of Crawfordville; a daughter, Dianne Beidler Walker of Tallahassee; two sisters, Rose Polentz of Richland, Wash., and Doris Williams of Allentown, Pa.; 13 grandchildren; and a sister-in-law, Elizabeth Hackethal of Tallahassee.