VALDOSTA — Like the circadian rhythms that sync our bodies’ vital organs to sleep and wake cycles, Dr. Richard L. Gannon’s storied career acclimated itself to a variety of lucrative positions in the field of science before eventually syncing the research scientist and pharmacologist with Georgia’s temperate weather and a position as head of Valdosta State University’s Biology department.

“We have one master pacemaker in the brain that coordinates that light and dark cycle in your brain, but there’s also smaller clocks in each of your organs,” says Dr. Gannon of circadian rhythms. “So when you change the timing of your sleep, the master clock may readjust but some of the other clocks may be out of sync. It’s that whole de-synchronization of clocks that makes you feel bad. As long as your wake and sleep times are organized, your body will adapt.”

From Arizona to Hawaii to Texas to New York to Georgia, Dr. Gannon’s body of work has been able to adapt. He’s been published in over 40 scientific journals and has drafted over 40 abstracts and presentations. But Dr. Gannon says pharmacology wasn’t his first career choice.

“In a perfect world, I would have been an underwater archaeologist,” says Dr. Gannon. “But I realized in grade school that it would be very difficult to make a career in that. I don’t think it was one particular thing that led me to science, just a combination of people and events.”

He says his interest in archaeology evolved into an interest in underwater archaeology, which eventually evolved into an interest in drugs from the sea and pharmacology.

But to understand how he progressed to this point in his life, you have to turn back the clock to the twilight hours. While steady for the most part, there were times were his clock had a few disruptive pauses and skips.

Born and raised in Arizona by his mother, an R.N., and his father, a bricklayer, Dr. Gannon says he spent his summers taking long bike rides, collecting garter snakes to sell, and wandering the woods in the northern part of the state.

“When I was a kid, we literally had tumble weeds rolling across the school yard,” says Dr. Gannon. “We had no television and only one radio station. It played hard-core, old timey country music and all of the commercials were in Navajo.”

He and his brothers were allowed to do anything they wanted to do career-wise, aside from laying bricks in the arid climate of the desert state. And while he’s doing exactly what he wants to do today, overseeing a faculty of decorated educators at VSU and collaborating with foreign research teams, Dr. Gannon’s career path was not without a few set backs.

“When I was 2 years old, my father bought a house that was five minutes away from Arizona State University,” says Dr. Gannon. “He figured if he didn’t have enough money to pay for college, we would be close enough to cut some of the costs. But of course none of us went there.”

Instead of ASU, he attended Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff, Ariz., where he earned his bachelors of science in aquatic biology and chemistry. His interest in sea anemones and chemistry prompted him to head to the University of Hawaii. He says he  applied to programs around the country where people were working with marine natural products.

“There was a guy there at the University of Hawaii that was making toxins out of sea anemones,” says Dr. Gannon. “When I got there, they informed me that the guy that I was going there to work with had retired and the only other guy who was working with sea anemones was also retired.”

Then it just got too expensive to stay there and they wouldn’t let him take out student loans, he says. So he moved to Texas to work in the marine biomedical institute of the school’s medical branch.

“There was a toxicologist who left, when I got there -- he went to El Paso,” says Dr. Gannon. “Then I ended up just working in the neuroscience laboratory doing neuroscience research and pharmacology. So that was the end of the marine aspect of my education.”

After accepting a fellowship with the National Research Council, Dr. Gannon’s pharmacological  expertise was called on by the U. S. Air Force. It was the start of the first Iraq war he says, and the Air Force needed a pill that would revitalize their jet lagged flight crews.

Six years had gone by. His team had isolated several suitable compounds for the jet lag pill, but no suitors, including the military, wanted to invest the $300-400 million needed to push the drug through clinical trials.

He moved into an administrative position for a private college in New York at the project’s end. And after ten years of living in the cold and crowded north, Dr. Gannon and his family moved out of their residence in Long Island, N.Y.’s Hamptons area and traded it in for Georgia's seemingly visible humidity.

“The cost of living up there was just stunning, even though we were paid well -- it just wasn’t like Valdosta,” says Dr. Gannon. “The kids were young and the weather was abysmal. We had a pool, and sometimes you could only use it for six weeks out of the year."

Dr. Gannon says his days are filled with work. Aside from coordinating the efforts of a decorated faculty of educators and scientists at VSU, Dr. Gannon says has two side projects and is in regular contact with foreign researchers.

“I collaborate with guys from Paris,” says Dr. Gannon. “I‘ve been in touch with them twice today – it’s just what we do. So now the compounds, instead of coming from a sea anemone, come in a jar from Europe.”

He leaves work on campus, provided his staff with a repose from his hard-hitting country tunes, only to engage in more work at home. And while he and other researchers have yet to find the compound that connects the master circadian clock with the minor clock. One can identify the compound that binds the clocks of his life -- work and the scientific process.

“My philosophy is that things can always be done,” says Dr. Gannon. “I don’t look at obstacle as something that can’t be overcome. I’m just a problem-solver, and I guess I got that from my dad.”

When asked if he missed collecting and analyzing his own samples, he said yes and that it isn’t quite out of his system. He says the Biology department has just picked up a new 22-foot boat, that will be used on excursions to collect samples.