Karen Wetterhahn

Karen Elizabeth Wetterhahn (16 October 1948 to 8 June 1997) was an American professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, who specialized in toxic metal exposure and whose research focused on the toxic effects of metals on living organisms, with particular interest in hexavalent chromium. She was born in Plattsburgh, New York, earned her bachelor's degree from St. Lawrence University in 1970 and her doctorate from Columbia University in 1975 under Stephen J. Lippard. She joined Dartmouth's faculty in 1976 as its first female chemistry professor and published more than 85 research papers. In 1990 she helped establish Dartmouth's Women in Science Project, which raised the share of women science majors from 13 to 25 percent. She died of mercury poisoning at the age of 48, after accidental exposure in 1996 to dimethylmercury that protective gloves of the day did not stop.