Mary Lura Sherrill (1888-1968) was head of the department of chemistry, Mount Holyoke College and, in 1947, had just received the Francis P. Garvan Medal. She had attended Randolph-Macon College (A.B., 1909) and University of Chicago (Ph.D., 1923) and taught briefly at Randolph-Macon before joining the faculty at Mt. Holyoke College in 1921, where she taught until 1954