Mary Locke Petermann

Mary Locke Petermann (February 25, 1908 – December 13, 1975) was an American cellular biochemist known for her key role in the discovery and characterization of animal ribosomes, the molecular complexes that carry out protein synthesis. She was the first woman to become a full professor at Cornell University's medical school.

Early life and education Mary Petermann was born February 25, 1908, in Laurium, Michigan, to Anna Mae Grierson and Albert Edward Petermann, general manager of the Calumet and Hecla Consolidated Copper Company in Calumet, Michigan.

She attended Calumet High School and Massachusetts preparatory school, then graduated from Smith College in 1929 with high honors in chemistry.

Career After receiving her doctorate, she stayed on at the University of Wisconsin. She became their physical chemistry department's first female chemist staff member and remained there as a postdoctoral researcher until 1945. Using ultracentrifugation, they showed that about 2/3 of the native diphtheria antitoxin (later determined to be the Fc portion of IgG) was "inactive" - it could be removed by protease treatment and the antitoxin could still bind two antigen molecules, so the binding sites must be close together. Her research on antibodies contributed to Rodney Porter's determination of immunoglobulin structure, for which he received the 1972 Nobel Prize.

In 1945, she took a position as a chemist at Memorial Hospital in New York City, studying the role of plasma proteins in metastasis then went on to research the role of nucleoproteins in cancer at the newly-formed Sloan-Kettering Institute for cancer research in 1946. To purify the components further, she used a technique called analytical ultracentrifugation to separate components of mouse spleen and liver homogenates based on their relative sedimentation velocity (related to their size).

Later, electron microscopy by Philip Siekevitz and George Palade would show that the original "microsomes" were fragments of the endoplasmic reticulum, studded with ribosomes.

Key papers