Marie Maynard Daly

Marie Maynard Daly (April 16, 1921 – October 28, 2003) was an American biochemist. She was the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Columbia University and the first African-American woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry. where she was also encouraged to pursue chemistry. She then enrolled in Queens College, a small, fairly new school in Flushing, New York. She lived at home to save money and graduated magna cum laude from Queens College with her bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1942. an honor that is awarded to the top 2.5% of the graduating class.

Daly began working in the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in 1955. In collaboration with Quentin B. Deming, she studied arterial metabolism.

During her final years at Albert Einstein College, per Daly's efforts to increase minority enrollment in professional and graduate schools, she helped run the Martin Luther King -Robert F. Kennedy program to help prepare black students for admission. In 1971 she was promoted to associate professor.

Daly was a member of the board of governors of the New York Academy of Sciences for two years. She was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Cancer Society. Daly was designated as a career scientist by the Health Research Council of the City of New York.

Daly retired in 1986 from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and in 1988 established a scholarship for African American chemistry and physics majors at Queens College in memory of her father. In 1999, she was recognized by the National Technical Association as one of the top 50 women in Science, Engineering and Technology.

Research Histones Daly was particularly interested in nuclear proteins. She developed methods for the fractionation of nuclear material and the determination of its composition. It was essential to separate cellular material into all of its components, without destroying or losing any of them.

She studied histones, proteins found in cell nuclei, and was able to show the amino acid composition of various histone fractions. Her studies of histones with Mirsky provided evidence for lysine-rich histones, in contrast to the arginine-rich histones described by Albrecht Kossel. Histones have since been shown to be important in gene expression.

Proteins and nucleic acids Daly developed methods for separating out the nuclei of tissues and measuring the base composition of purines and pyrimidines in desoxypentose nucleic acids.

She investigated protein synthesis, Using radiolabeled amino acid glycine, she was able to measure how protein metabolism changed under feeding and fasting conditions in mice. This allowed her to monitor the activity of the cytoplasm as the radiolabeled glycine was taken up into the cell nucleus. After 1953, the cell nucleus research field was flooded with funding opportunities. an important discovery in understanding how heart attacks occur. Investigating aging, she suggested that smooth muscle hypertrophy due to aging might have a causative role in hypertension and atherosclerosis. Daly was also an early investigator into the effects of cigarette smoke on the lungs and on hypertension.

Creatine In the 1970s, Daly began studying the uptake of creatine by muscle cells, an important research topic in the energy recycling systems of muscle. Her "Uptake of Creatine by Cultured Cells" (1980) described the conditions under which muscle tissues best absorbed creatine.

Early life There is limited information about her personal life and motivation for science. Daly's father, Ivan C. Daly, had immigrated from the British West Indies, found work as a postal clerk and eventually married Helen Page of Washington, D.C. They lived in New York City, and Daly was born and raised in Corona, Queens. She often visited her maternal grandparents in Washington, where she read about scientists and their achievements in her grandfather's extensive library. She was especially impressed by Paul de Kruif's The Microbe Hunters, a work which influenced her decision to become a scientist. Daly would thus complete her father's ambition by majoring in chemistry. Years later, she started a Queens College scholarship fund in his honor to assist minority students majoring in chemistry and or physics.

Daly married and took the name Marie Maynard Daly Clark. Additionally Einstein College also created an annual memorial lecture called The Marie M. Daly Memorial Celebration that is sponsored by the division of Biomedical Sciences and the Einstein Minority Scientist Association. Every year guest speakers are invited to give a lecture highlighting diversity and contribution of minorities to science.

Selected bibliography