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Mary Letitia Caldwell received the Garvan Medal in 1961 for her pioneering work on the nature of enzymes, and the development of methods for purifying enzymes. She was born on December 18, 1890 in Bogota, Colombia to Milton Etsil and Susanna Adams Caldwell, American missionaries. Caldwell attended high school in the United States and then graduated with a bachelor's degree from Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio in 1913. She continued there as an instructor and assistant professor until 1918.
After obtaining both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from Columbia University, Mary Caldwell secured a position as a senior faculty member in the chemistry department of Columbia University in 1921 and attained the rank of full professor in 1948. She was the only female senior faculty member in the chemistry department at the time.
In her early work on enzymes, Caldwell needed samples purer than those from commercial sources. This led her to pursue the development of standard procedures to purify enzymes, such as porcine pancreatic amylase. In addition, her research group established that enzymes are proteins. For these pioneering discoveries, Mary Letitia Caldwell was awarded the Garvan Medal by the American Chemical Society.
Mary Caldwell was a strong role model for women pursuing chemistry as a career; in fact most of her students and collaborators were women. She published more than 50 research papers and directed 18 graduate students toward their Ph.D. degrees.
After retiring from Columbia in 1959, Mary Letitia Caldwell lived in Fishkill, New York, where she died on July 1, 1972.
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