who was this 70s researcher who questioned evolution?

Dean H. Kenyon, perhaps? Co-author of Of Pandas and People. Though his conversion wasn't through his research, but rather from reading creationists' books, starting with one containing arguments against Kenyon's own work (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_H._Kenyon:

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In 1969, Kenyon co-authored Biochemical Predestination with Gary Steinman. Chemist Stephen Berry explained Kenyon and Steinman's theory as "describing the following causal chain: the properties of the chemical elements dictate the types of monomers that can be formed in prebiotic syntheses, which then dictate the properties of the occurring polymers, which finally dictate the properties of the first eobionts and all succeeding cells." Kenyon's work was about virus production.

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During the 1969-1970 academic year he was "on a fellowship at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where he reviewed the contemporary literature on the relationship of science and religion." Then in 1974, he was a Visiting Scholar to Trinity College, Oxford.

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Kenyon's views changed around 1976 after exposure to the work of young earth creationists. In his own words,

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Then in 1976, a student gave me a book by A.E. Wilder-Smith, The Creation of Life: A Cybernetic Approach to Evolution. Many pages of that book deal with arguments against Biochemical Predestination, and I found myself hard-pressed to come up with a counter-rebuttal. Eventually, several other books and articles by neo-creationists came to my attention. I read some of Henry Morris' books, in particular, The Genesis Flood. I'm not a geologist, and I don't agree with everything in that book, but what stood out was that here was a scientific statement giving a very different view of earth history. Though the book doesn't deal with the subject of the origin of life per se, it had the effect of suggesting that it is possible to have a rational alternative explanation of the past.

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Kurt Wise had always been a fundamentalist and creationist. He just happens to be (or to have been) one of the very few honest ones. He admitted that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, but accepting it would conflict with his beliefs (he had taken a bible and cut out of it everything that he believed he would have to abandon by accepting evolution and, I think, an ancient earth, and was left with tatters), so he made the conscious decision to go with his beliefs instead.There was an interview with him on AiG.PS
I still think it was most likely Kenyon. But, as everybody has pointed out, given the nature of creationist quote-mining, it could be anybody.Edited by dwise1, : PS