Helen Dyer

Helen M. Dyer (May 26, 1895 – September 20, 1998) was an American biochemist and cancer researcher. Her main work concerned the mechanism of carcinogenesis; she also worked with metabolism and nutrition. Life Dyer was born on 26 May 1895 to Florence Robertson Dyer (sometimes named as Mathilda Robertson Dyer) and Joseph E. Dyer in Washington, D.C. Her father owned a wholesale grocery. She had three older siblings. As a young woman, she was uninterested in science; though she took science courses in high school, she was an accomplished athlete. She went to Western High School and was graduated in 1913. She credited her high school teachers for inspiring her scientific studies. World War I caused her to abandon her plans of teaching in China, instead, she worked for the Red Cross and Civil Service Commission during the war. She never married. Throughout her life she was involved with her church and, after her graduation from Goucher College, the Goucher Alumni Association. Dyer died on 20 September 1998, 103 years old. Education In 1917, Dyer received her Bachelor of Arts degree in biology from Goucher College, where she had received a scholarship. She also earned a minor in physiology. While a physiology instructor at Mt. Holyoke, she took chemistry classes to supplement her education. She received her Master of Science degree in biochemistry in 1929 and her Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1935, both from George Washington University. Scientific career With only a bachelor's degree, in 1919, Dyer became an instructor in physiology at Mt. Holyoke College. The next year, she became a research assistant at the Pharmacologist Hygienic Lab, a subsidiary of the U.S. Public Health Service. There, she was tasked with investigating the toxicity of chemotherapeutic agents and discovered that heavy metals in the compounds reacted with thiols to cause toxicity. She also studied the efficacy of arsenic-based and lead-based compounds in combating cancer, tumors, and syphilis. In 1925, she worked with Carl Voegtlin on an ultimately unpublished study of the growth patterns and growth rate of rat tumors. As a Ph.D. student at George Washington University, Dyer had a job as a teaching fellow, where she studied sulfur compounds with Vincent du Vigneaud, the 1955 Nobel laureate in chemistry.