Helen Marie Dyer was born on May 26, 1895 in Washington, DC. She was the youngest child of Joseph Edwin Dyer and Florence Robertson Dyer. During Helen’s childhood, her family lived in or near the Washington, DC area and she attended the local public schools. Helen began to have an interest in science in high school; because of her excellent scholastic record, she was encouraged to apply to nearby Goucher College in Baltimore, MD.

Dyer was awarded a scholarship to Goucher College where she chose biology as her major and worked with William Kellicutt. In addition, she decided on a physiology minor largely as a result of her interaction with Lillian Welch. Helen Dyer graduated from Goucher College with a B.A. in biology in 1917. From that time until the end of the World War I, she worked for the Red Cross and Civil Service Commission. She moved to Mt. Holyoke, Massachusetts and taught physiology for a year under Abby Turner. She returned to Washington, DC to be able to work on a graduate degree that would ultimately lead to a university teaching position.

From 1920–7, Helen Dyer worked as a research assistant in the pharmacology laboratory of Carl Voegtlin at the Chemotherapy Laboratory at the Hygienics Laboratory. Together they studied the toxicity of arsenic compounds and used the results to try to understand the mechanism of chemotherapeutic drugs, finally concluding that arsenic and other metal compounds were too toxic. From later studies that focused on the growth and growth rate of rat tumors they were able to identify the growth mechanism.

In 1927 Dyer enrolled in George Washington University for graduate study and was awarded an M.S. degree in 1929. She continued her graduate studies there, taught as an instructor, and worked on sulfur compounds under the direction of Vincent du Vigneaud, who later received the Nobel Prize (1955). Helen Dyer earned her Ph.D. in 1935. She accepted a teaching position at George Washington University and remained there until 1942 when she accepted an offer to work with Dr. Voegtlin at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). She worked there until her formal retirement in 1972. During her career at the NCI, Dyer published the first comprehensive index of tumor chemotherapy and made several significant contributions in experimental cancer research. She published sixty papers. She was awarded the Garvan Medal in 1962.

After her formal retirement, Helen Dyer continued to work as a consultant and reviewer. Helen M. Dyer died on September 20, 1998 in Washington, DC at the age of 103.

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