Peggy Etter

Education and career

Etter was born as Margaret Cairns in Greenville, a town in Delaware near Wilmington. Etter attained her B.Sc. at the University of Pennsylvania, spending a freshman semester at Cornell (where she met future collaborator Joel Bernstein in the Mugwuamp freshman orientation group as a National Science Foundation predoctoral fellow under the supervision of Jack Gougoutas. Her thesis and postdoctoral work focused on the study of the chemical and structural properties of polyvalent iodine compounds using X-ray diffraction and spectroscopic techniques. and still provides a model for how topotactic reactions should be studied.

Due to the difficulties of maintaining a stable research program at 3M, which since has been cited more than 4,000 times. The use of "Etter Rules" and the approach was incorporated into the CSD software for automatic analysis of structures.

In April 1991 Etter was diagnosed with stage IV kidney cancer, in the most productive phase of her career that she herself described as being "on a roll". Sloan Research Fellowship (1989) Bush Foundation Fellowship Iota Sigma Pi Award for Excellence in Chemistry St. Paul Businessperson of the Year (1986) for her work with “Rochelle Crystal Corporation.”

In recognition of both her scientific achievements and her work as a mentor to students and novice scientists, the American Crystallographic Association launched two awards in honor of Peggy Etter: the Margaret C. Etter Early Career Award, given to scientists who have made important contributions early in their careers, and the Margaret C. Etter Student Lecturer Award, awarded to a selection of students for their oral presentations at the annual conference of the association.

In addition, the University of Minnesota holds an annual Etter Memorial Lecture and hosts an endowed lectureship in solid state chemistry and materials science bearing her name.