Allene Jeanes

Allene Rosalind Jeanes (19 July 1906 to 11 December 1995) was an American chemist whose work shaped carbohydrate chemistry. Her best known contributions are the development of dextran, a blood plasma substitute used in the Korean and Vietnam wars, and of xanthan gum, a polysaccharide common in food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. She was born in Waco, Texas, graduated summa cum laude from Baylor University in 1928, took a master's degree in organic chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 1929, and earned a PhD in organic chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1938. After fellowships at the National Institutes of Health and work at the National Bureau of Standards, she joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Northern Regional Research Laboratory in Peoria, Illinois, in 1941 and worked there until 1976. She was the first woman to receive the Distinguished Service Award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.