Mary Peters Fieser

Mary Peters Fieser ( born May 27, 1909 in Atchison, Kansas, † March 22, 1997 in Belmont, Massachusetts) was an American chemist.

She was the daughter of an English professor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, grew up in Harrisburg ( Pennsylvania) and studied at Bryn Mawr College with a bachelor 's degree in chemistry 1930., Where she also met the chemistry professor Louis Fieser, her future husband ( Marriage 1932), which they followed to Harvard University in 1930. Officially, she studied at Radcliffe College ( took their courses, but predominantly at Harvard ) with a Master 's degree in 1936. Never doctorate, mainly because they had met discrimination against female chemists and so was able to work with her husband. With Louis Fieser they worked closely together, and both are known for their various common textbooks, including the successful textbook Organic Chemistry (1944). At Harvard University, she never had a paid job, but it was after 29 years in the 1960s, Research Associate ( unpaid). After the death of Louis Fieser she continued her work until well into the 1990s.

They looked at Louis Fieser with the synthesis of natural products such as steroids, for example cortisone. They synthesized vitamin K and derivatives of the antimalarial agent quinones, which, however, did not prove to be effective.

Your textbook of organic chemistry for colleges with Louis Fieser was innovative for its time, it treated as applications organic chemistry in daily life ( these chapters were predominantly made by Mary Fieser ). In later editions were short biographies of over 450 chemists.

From 1967, she was with Louis Fieser, Reagents of Organic Synthesis ( later Fieser 's reagents for organic synthesis ), which they further edited by Fiesers death with other (until 1994). The series eventually comprised 16 volumes.

In 1971 she received the Garvan Medal of the American Chemical Society. The Louis and Mary Fieser Laboratory for Undergraduate Organic Chemistry at Harvard is named after them.

The marriage with Louis Fieser remained childless. She had a fondness for cats, of which drawings made ​​their way into the prefaces of their books found (first in Organic Chemistry in 1944 ).

Writings

With Louis Fieser:

• Organic Chemistry, Boston: DC Heath 1944, 3rd Edition, New York, Reinhold 1956 German Translation: Textbook of Organic Chemistry, Weinheim: VCH, 2nd edition, 1955 ( translator Hans R. Hensel, foreword Richard Kuhn )