Mary Elvira Weeks

Mary Elvira Weeks , called Elvira (born April 10, 1892 in Lyons (Wisconsin) , † June 20, 1975 in Detroit ), was an American chemical historian.

Mary Elvira Weeks studied at Ripon College with a bachelor's degree in 1913 and received her master's degree in chemistry in 1914 with J. Howard Matthews (1881-1970) at the University of Wisconsin . She then worked for seven years as a high school teacher and chemistry lab technician. In 1921 she became an instructor at the University of Kansas , where she received her doctorate in 1927 and became an assistant professor and in 1937 an associate professor. She had little time for research at the university, as she had a heavy teaching load and turned increasingly to the history of chemistry, which suited her interests in culture and languages. Since this was not conducive to her career opportunities in the chemistry faculty, she moved to Wayne State University (Kresge-Hooker Science Library) as a research librarian in 1944 . In 1954 she retired, but continued to work as a translator and chemical historian.

From 1932 to 1933 she wrote a series of articles on the history of the discovery of the chemical elements for the Journal of Chemical Education (21 parts). The articles were collected in a book first published in 1934. Many of the illustrations came from the collection of portraits of chemists of her older colleague as a chemistry professor at the University of Kansas Frank B. Dains (1869-1949). After completing his doctorate in Chicago in 1898, he spent a year in Berlin and Freiburg and began collecting chemist portraits. Weeks supplemented this with pictures from their own collection over the course of the seven editions of the book (the last edition in 1968, with Henry M. Leicester becoming a co-author, initially for artificially created elements in nuclear chemistry).

In 1947 she began writing the history of the American Chemical Society as the successor to Charles Albert Browne, who died the same year (and at his own request) . The book was published in 1952.

Mary Weeks received the Dexter Award for Chemistry History in 1967 .

Fonts

• The Discovery of the Elements, Easton, Pennsylvania: Mack Printing 1934, 6th edition Journal of Chemical Education 1956 with contributions from Henry M. Leicester, Archives , 7th edition 1968
• with Charles A. Browne: A History of the American Chemical Society — Seventy-five Eventful Years, Washington DC: American Chemical Society 1952

Web links

• ACS biography, from Aaron Ihde, A quarter century of Dexter Awards, 1981, pdf