Maria Przybylska (1923–2008)

Maria Przybylska passed away peacefully on 8 October 2008 in Ottawa, Canada. She is survived by sons Martin and Steven (and wife Michelle) and grandchildren Elizabeth and Alexander. She obtained her BSc in 1946 and her PhD in 1949, both from the University of Glasgow, the latter under the renowned Professor John Monteith Robertson. Her doctoral work involved solving the structure of quinol dimethyl ether with only a slide rule to perform the inverse Fourier transforms. After graduation she took a position at the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa, where she worked into the late 1990s, well past her formal retirement in 1988. Her 70 published papers spanned 50 years – the first appearing in 1949 and the last in 1999 when she was 76.

Though her work initially concentrated on alkaloids and other small organic compounds, during the latter part of her career she focused on immunochemistry and the challenges of crystallizing and solving large biologically significant proteins.