Mary Peters Fieser

Mary Peters Fieser (27 May 1909 to 22 March 1997) was an American chemist best known for the many books she wrote with her husband Louis Fieser. She was born Mary Peters in Atchison, Kansas, graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1930 with a B.A. in chemistry, and followed her mentor Louis Fieser to Harvard University, enrolling at Radcliffe College in order to take chemistry courses there; she was awarded a Radcliffe M.A. in 1936. She married Fieser in 1932 and collaborated with him until his death in 1977, working first on the chemistry of quinones and steroids and syntheses of vitamin K, cortisone and the antimalarial compound lapinone. Their textbook Organic Chemistry (1944) was widely influential, and they also produced Reagents for Organic Synthesis and a Style Guide for Chemists. She never held a paid position at Harvard, but she received the Garvan Medal of the American Chemical Society in 1971.