Marie essayed many roles in her career. While working as a physical science instructor, she started her career at Howard University and she was involved with Herman Branson for some kind of research work.She shifted her career and joined Alfred E. Mirsky’s group right after she got recognized by the American Cancer Society. She was with the Rockefeller Institute and her area of work included working with cell nuclei and their various parts.In that era, the DNA function was yet to be found and Daly’s part was to figure out how protein construction works in the human body. Later, she started learning about arterial metabolism from physicians and surgeons under the surveillance of Quentin B. Deming while being at Columbia University. From 1958 to 1963, the American Heart Association deployed her as an investigator as well. Later, she became an assistant professor, however, she got raised to associate professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University and her stream was biochemistry and medicine.In 1975, the American Association for the Advancement of Science convened a forum in STEM fields, where Daly was one of the 30 woman participants. For two years, the New York Academy of Sciences had her as a governor and she had an alliance with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Health Research Council entitled her as a career scientist. By 1986, she was retired and in 1988 she ensured a scholarship for those pursuing a chemistry and physics major. The National Technical Association acknowledged her contributions in science, engineering, and technology and ranked her amongst the top 50 women scientists.This, however, is just a glimpse of what she had done! Let’s learn more about her.Marie Maynard Daly: Life HistoryHelen Page Daly and Ivan Daly raised Marie as the oldest child and their only daughter. She married Vincent Clark in 1961.On February 26, 2016, the principal of a new elementary school in New York City revealed the school would be named ‘The Dr. Marie M. Daly Academy of Excellence’ in her honor. Marie M. Daly was an American biochemist and the first-ever black woman to receive a doctorate in chemistry in 1947 from Columbia University.Daly’s enthusiasm for science was encouraged by her dad, who’d already attended Cornell University with the purpose of becoming a chemist but he was unable to finish his degree owing to financial constraints. She went on to work at the Rockefeller Institute, Columbia University, and Yeshiva University, among other notable higher education institutions.Marie Maynard Daly: EducationDaly went to the Hunter College High School, a girls-only high school administered by the Hunter College faculty, in which she was given the support to explore and pursue chemistry. She subsequently registered in Queens College in Flushing, Young York city, a modest, relatively new school.Daly was a student who traveled every day to college from her home and did not take a hostel near her college. She received her Bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Queens College, with magna cum laude in 1942. She had been recognized as a Queens College scholar after graduation, a distinction which was given to the top 2.5% of those who graduated. She worked as a physical science lecturer at Howard University following graduation in 1947. Due to labor constraints and the necessity for researchers to help the war efforts during Second World War, Daly was fortunate to get scholarships to pursue her Master’s degree and postdoctoral research at New York University and Columbia University, respectively.Daly was passionate about the greater representation of minority students enrolled in graduate science programs and medical schools and liked to teach. Daly continued to work as a laboratory assistant at Queens College whilst also pursuing her Master’s degree in chemistry at New York University, which she earned in 1943. After finishing her Masters, she subsequently worked as a chemistry instructor at Queens College before enrolling in Columbia University’s Doctorate program, where she was mentored by Dr. Mary L. Caldwell.Under Caldwell’s guidance, a nutritionist doctorate assisted Daly in discovering ways compounds created in an organism had an influence on the breakdown of food. In 1947, at Columbia University, Daly became the first black person to earn her doctorate. Her thesis was titled ‘A Study of the Products Formed By the Action of Pancreatic Amylase on Corn Starch’.Marie Maynard Daly: AwardsIn 1943, Daly graduated from New York University with a Master’s in chemistry.Despite the fact that it was the late ’40s, Daly didn’t even believe chemistry to be an uncommon career path because she had other females in her scientific classes including both at high school and college. Over the next year, Daly worked at Queens College whilst deciding what she wanted to do with her life.Marie Maynard Daly Clark was one of the 30 ethnic minority students invited to a symposium in 1975 to discuss the issues or challenges facing minority women in STEM professions. For two consecutive years, Daly served on the famous board of governors at New York for Science Association. Daly has also earned memberships from the American Cancer Society, the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Heart Association’s Council on Arteriosclerosis, and the American Associations for the Advancement of Science.Her contributions to medical science have been immense. The research on understanding the causes of lung diseases and heart attacks was furthered by the research she conducted.Marie Maynard Daly’s Contribution In BiochemistryAfter over a year of coaching chemistry students at Queens College, Daly entered Columbia University for a doctoral program. She taught biochemistry courses to the students there, a job that she had come to love.Protein structure and human metabolism were the two important focus areas of Daly’s study. She made significant contributions to our knowledge of the causes of heart attacks and pulmonary illness, among other things. The consequences of cholesterol on the dynamics of the heart, the impact of carbohydrates and other nutrients on the condition of arteries, and the collapse of the circulatory system in terms of old age or high blood pressure were among Daly’s early investigations. During her career, Daly went on to research how proteins are made and structured in cells. The Health Research Council of the City of New York classified Daly as a professional scientist. Commemorating her father, Daly departed from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1986 and created a scholarship for chemistry and physics students who were from the black community at Queens College in 1988.Did You Know…One of the brightest medical students, Daly was very much into nuclear proteins, their fractions, and their compositions. The tricky part was to segregate the components in a pristine state.Her work along with Mirsky and Albrecht Kossel, who were responsible for describing lysine-rich histones and arginine-rich histones respectively, had been proven important to gene expression. Daly found a way to isolate the nuclei of tissues and discovered how to measure purines and pyrimidines composition which are in nucleic acids. She manifested that there should not be anything else except adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. While working with protein synthesis, she showed the value of cytoplasmic ribonucleoprotein. Radiolabeled amino acid glycine facilitated the way of measuring protein metabolism during feeding or fasted state in an experiment conducted with mice, which led her to state an explanation of how cytoplasmic activity works.In 1953, DNA structure was understood by Watson and Crick leading them to their Nobel Prize in 1962, where they acknowledged Daly’s work regarding ribonucleoprotein in protein synthesis. Back in the day, she established a correlation between hypertension and atherosclerosis, she found out the impacts of cholesterol on clogged arteries and the formation of heart attacks. She was intrigued to discover how hypertension affects the circulatory system. Her studies concluded a diet that includes high cholesterol food items act as a catalyst for hypertension. She also looked into how aging and smoking could be causative factors for hypertension.
Marie essayed many roles in her career. While working as a physical science instructor, she started her career at Howard University and she was involved with Herman Branson for some kind of research work.