Not much is known about May Sybil Leslie’s early life other than she was born in Yorkshire, England in 1887. Upon graduation from the University of Leeds with first-class honors in chemistry in 1908, she worked with H. M. Dawson. The following year she published a classic paper with Dawson on the kinetics of the iodination of acetone. For this work she was awarded a M.Sc. in physical chemistry from the University of Leeds.

In 1910, May Sybil Leslie was awarded a scholarship that enabled her to spend a year working with Marie Curie in Paris on the extraction of new elements from thorium. After that she returned to England and continued her studies on thorium in Ernest Rutherford’s laboratory at Victoria University, Manchester. Between 1912 and 1915, Leslie began to collaborate again with Dawson, while teaching high school science and then while being an assistant lecturer and demonstrator at University College, Bangor, Wales.

During the World War I she worked as an industrial chemist at His Majesty’s Factory in Liverpool, England and later in North Wales, on the determination of the mechanism of formation of nitric acid and how to optimize its industrial production. In recognition of the high caliber of this work, May Sybil Leslie was awarded a D.Sc. degree by the University of Leeds in 1918. She was relieved of her government appointment when the male chemists returned from war. In 1920 Leslie accepted a position as Demonstrator in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Leeds. She was promoted to Assistant Lecturer in the following year and by 1924 she had joined the Department of Physical Chemistry where, in 1928, she was promoted to Lecturer. During this time Leslie authored a volume of the series A Textbook of Inorganic Chemistry and coauthored a second one.

In 1923 May Sybil Leslie married Alfred Hamilton Burr, a Lecturer in Chemistry at the Royal Technical College, Salford, England. Leslie resigned her position at Leeds in 1929; the reason for this is not known. She joined her husband in Salford and later moved with him to Scotland where he had been appointed head of the Chemistry Department of Coatbridge Technical College. Alfred Burr died in 1933. May Sybil Leslie returned to Leeds where she finished her husband’s work on wool dyes and then resumed her own research on the mechanisms of reactions.

May Sybil Leslie Burr was elected an Associate of the Institute of Chemistry (1918) and Fellow of the Chemical Society (1920).

May Sybil Leslie Burr died on July 3, 1937 of unspecified causes. Her research mentor, H. M. Dawson spoke with great respect about her research abilities and her teaching. He also said, (quoted in ref 2):

To her intimate friends she was known as a woman of the highest ideals, of wide human sympathies and of great earnestness of purpose. Her reticence and innate modesty limited the circle of acquaintances, but such restriction would doubtless count for very little in comparison with the respect and sincere regard of those who were privileged to enjoy her confidence.

1. Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, Ogilvie, Marilyn; Harvey, Joy, Eds.; Routledge: New York, 2000; Volume 2, L–Z, pp 776–7.
2. Rayner-Canham, Geoff; Rayner-Canham, Marelene. A Chemist of Some Repute. Chem. Br. 1993, 3, 206–8.
3. Rayner-Canham, Marelene; Rayner-Canham, Geoffrey. May Sybil Leslie: From Radioactivity to Industrial Chemistry. In A Devotion to Their Science: Pioneer Women of Radioactivity. Chemical Heritage Foundation: Philadelphia, PA, 1997; pp 76–81.
4. Rayner-Canham, Marelene; Rayner-Canham, Geoffrey. Women in Chemistry: Their Changing Roles from Alchemical Times to the Mid-Twentieth Century. American Chemical Society: Washington, DC 1998; pp 166–9.