Marie Daly (1921-2003) was a highly acclaimed, barrier breaking American biochemist.
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Today’s STEMinist was a highly acclaimed, barrier breaking American biochemist. She was the first Black woman in the United States to earn a Phd in Chemistry, and went on to make groundbreaking contributions in a multitude of areas, including in the study of protein synthesis, the chemistry of histones, the relationship between diet, cholesterol and hypertension, and in the study of creatine. Let’s talk about the extraordinary Marie Daly.
Marie Maynard Daly was born on April 16th, 1921 in Queens, New York to Ivan and Helen Daly.
From an early age, Marie showed a real aptitude for science. She was particularly fascinated by Paul De Kruif’s book,The Microbe Hunters, about the scientists and doctors who discovered microbes and the vaccinations that prevent them. She was also deeply influenced by her father’s love of science. As a young man, He had attended Cornell University to study Chemistry, but had to drop out when he could no longer afford the tuition.
Marie attended Hunter College High School, where she, like her father, excelled in the sciences. Following high school, she enrolled at Queens College to study chemistry, graduating magna cum laude in 1942. Just one year later, Marie graduated from New York University with her Masters in chemistry. She then entered Columbia University’s Phd program in chemistry, and, after only three years, earned her doctorate, making her the first Black woman in American history to receive a PhD in chemistry.
With her degrees in hand, Marie took a professorship teaching chemistry at the prestigious Howard University in Washington, D.C. After just two years there, she received a grant from the American Cancer Society to cover her postdoctoral work. She moved to the Rockefeller Institute in New York, where she teamed up with Alfred E. Mirsky, a major pioneer in the field of molecular biology.
For the next seven years, Marie and Alfred worked on a number of projects, including a major study mapping the composition and metabolism of various components within cell nuclei. Marie also did a deep dive into studying protein synthesis, an incredibly complex area. When scientists James Watson and Francis Crick won the Nobel Prize in 1962 for their earlier groundbreaking work on the structure of DNA, Watson cited one of Marie’s papers on protein synthesis as influential to their work.
Marie also studied the relationship between diet and the health of a person’s cardiac and circulatory systems. Marie was the first person to establish the relationship between cholesterol and clogged arteries, which revolutionized the way we understand heart attacks and how they happen. She was the first person to figure out that hypertension was a precursor for atherosclerosis. Marie was able to show that a diet that included high levels of cholesterol resulted in clogged arteries, which was accelerated by the existence of hypertension. And, she was one of the early researchers into the negative effects of cigarette smoke on hypertension and on the function and composition of the lungs.
After leaving the Rockefeller Institute, Marie took a job teaching biochemistry at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1960, she became a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where she stayed until her retirement. While there, she began a series of important studies of creatine and its uptake by muscle cells, which was considered an important area of study at the time. Her seminal 1980 paper entitled “Uptake of Creatine by Cultured Cells” was the first to describe the optimal muscle tissue conditions for the absorption of creatine.
In 1975, Marie was one of only 30 women scientists of color invited to a conference held by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The goal was to examine the particular challenges faced by women of color in STEM, and to make recommendations on how to better recruit and retain these scientists. The resulting document was an influential report entitled “The Double Bind: The Price of Being a Minority Woman in Science.”
Throughout her long and revered career, Marie received a plethora of fellowships, including from the New York Academy of Sciences and the American Heart Association. She also served as a member of the prestigious board of governors of the New York Academy of Sciences. In 1999, Marie was honored by the National Technical Association as one of the top 50 women in STEM in the United States, a pretty extraordinary honor.
After Marie’s retirement in 1986, she set up a scholarship fund in her father’s memory at Queen’s College for African American students studying physics or chemistry.
Marie died on October 28, 2003 in New York City. She was 82 years old.
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