Daly, Marie Maynard

Impact on the world

Became the first Black woman in the United States to earn a doctorate in chemistry, going on to conduct influential research on nucleic acid metabolism, histone composition, and arterial lysosomes across a long academic career.

Life & background

Born and raised in Queens, New York, Daly earned her PhD in chemistry from Columbia University in 1947 based on her dissertation studying pancreatic amylase's action on corn starch, becoming the first African American woman in the U.S. to hold a chemistry doctorate. She went on to research nucleic acid metabolism at the Rockefeller Institute, teach biochemistry at Columbia, and become a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, publishing widely on topics including ribonucleoprotein and arterial lysosomes.

Sources

1. Library of Congress (Inside Adams); American Chemical Society