Mary-Dell Chilton

Mary-Dell Chilton (February 2, 1939 – June 24, 2026) was an American biochemist, inventor and writer who was one of the founders of modern plant biotechnology. She performed research at Washington University in St. Louis and was a Distinguished Science Fellow at Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. Chilton was notable for her discovery of the presence of Agrobacterium Ti plasmid DNA fragments in the nuclear DNA of crown gall tissue in 1977. She was raised by her grandmother in Southern Pines, North Carolina. She earned both a B.S. and Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She later completed postdoctoral work at the University of Washington in Seattle. Chilton described what she had done as disarming the bacterial plasmid responsible for the DNA transfer. She and her collaborators produced the first genetically modified plants using Agrobacterium carrying the disarmed Ti plasmid. She has been called the "queen of Agrobacterium."

After her breakthroughs in the 1980s, Chilton moved to the private sector at Syngenta Biotechnology in Research Triangle Park, eventually becoming vice president of agricultural biotechnology and principal scientist.

Awards and honors

For her work with Agrobacterium tumefaciens, Chilton was recognized with an honorary doctorate from the University of Louvaine, the John Scott Medal from the City of Philadelphia, membership in the United States National Academy of Sciences, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Life Sciences from the Franklin Institute. In honor of her many achievements, in 2002 Syngenta announced creation of the Mary-Dell Chilton Center – a new administrative and conference center which was added to the company's facility in Research Triangle Park, in North Carolina.

In June 2013, she was named a laureate of the prestigious 2013 World Food Prize. In 2015, Chilton was elected to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 2020, she was one of eight women featured in "The Only One in the Room" display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Chilton was recognized as a Pioneer Member of the American Society of Plant Biologists.

In 2023, US President Joe Biden awarded Chilton the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.