Marilyn M Olmstead

Marilyn Olmstead (1943–2020) was an American chemist, an expert in small molecule crystallography and an international leader in the crystallographic study of fullerenes, or "Buckyballs." She held the position of professor emerita of chemistry at the University of California Davis.

She was elected as a Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2014 and the American Crystallographic Association in 2017.

Early life Marilyn Olmstead was born on December 8, 1943, in Glendale, California. (until 2018 when this record was broken ) and endohedral fullerenes (those that contain encaged metals and small clusters). She pushed boundaries of crystallography, employing synchrotron radiation and ultra-low temperature data collection. Complementing her work on fullerenes and carbon nanocapsules, she also collaborated with petroleum scientists to provide definitive structural characterization of a number of the large family of diamondoid hydrocarbons found in oil wells. Structure of tetramantane, a new type of σ-helical structure based on a diamondoid (nanodiamond) framework, and the structure of the first fullerene that did not obey the Isolated pentagon rule. She was also responsible for the structural characterization of the first boron-centered radical.

Olmstead served as an original co-editor of the journal Acta Crystallographica Section E from 2001 to 2011. She served in the elected positions of chair of the General Interest Group, and chair of the Continuing Education Committee in the American Crystallographic Association. She was a member of the Journal's Commission of the International Union of Crystallography. She was an elected member of the U.S. National Committee on Crystallography, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences.

In 2014 Olmstead was elected a Fellow of the American Chemical Society.