Mary Lowe Good (June 20, 1931 – November 20, 2019) was an American inorganic chemist who worked academically, in industrial research and in government. Good contributed to the understanding of catalysts such as ruthenium which activate or speed up chemical reactions.
Good served as the Under Secretary for Technology in the United States Department of Commerce from 1993 to 1997 under President Bill Clinton. She briefly served as Acting United States Secretary of Commerce from April 3, 1996, to April 12, 1996.
Good received a number of significant awards including the Garvan–Olin Medal, the Othmer Gold Medal, the Priestley Medal, the Vannevar Bush Award, and the Heinz Award in Technology, the Economy, and Employment.
Early life and education
Mary Lowe was born on June 20, 1931, in Grapevine, Texas, to Winnie and John Lowe. The family moved to Kirby, Arkansas, in 1942. Her father was a principal in a local school, and her mother was a teacher and librarian. The family later moved to Willisville, Arkansas, where Mary attended high school. No chemistry course or lab was offered at the school, so Mary would spend her time as a young student creating her own labs. She once produced a homemade photography studio in the cellar of her home after fixing up an old enlarger and reading up on the chemicals needed for photo developing.
Lowe initially attended Arkansas State Teacher's College (now the University of Central Arkansas) with the intention of being a home economics teacher. She became interested in chemistry as a freshman and changed her major to chemistry and physics, receiving her B.Sc. from the University of Central Arkansas in 1950. Lowe became one of the first three students to graduate from the University's chemistry program.
Her professors encouraged her to go to graduate school. She received a fellowship, which enabled her to study radiochemistry with Raymond R. Edwards at the University of Arkansas. At age 19, as an atomic energy research assistant, she received her first Q-level government clearance. In 1952, she married Bill Jewel Good, a fellow graduate student in physics. Mary Lowe Good received her MS in 1953 and her PhD in 1955 from the University of Arkansas becoming the first woman from Arkansas to earn a doctoral degree in the hard sciences. Her graduate work involved studying radioactive iodine in aqueous solutions (used for treating thyroid conditions). She worked on processes of solvent extraction of metal complexes and described the chemical and physical properties of chemical species in an organic solvent. She was able to explain why solutions of radioactive iodine were unstable, and determine the concentration at which species would be at equilibrium values, by applying the Nernst equation effect.
Louisiana State University System
Good spent 25 years in teaching and research at Louisiana State University and the University of New Orleans, which was at the time part of the Louisiana State University System. Good went to Baton Rouge as director of the radiochemistry laboratory and as an instructor and assistant professor of chemistry (1954–1958). At Baton Rouge she worked on iodine and sulfur chemistry with Sean McGlynn.
In 1958 Good and her husband moved to New Orleans when both were offered positions at a new campus that was being established. The Louisiana State University New Orleans (LSUNO) was the first university in the southern states to open as a fully integrated institution. Expanding on her work in radiochemistry, Good became interested in using spectroscopy to study inorganic chemistry compounds, taking measurements and relating experimental results to theoretical predictions. She was able to study molecular bonding in both solutions and solid states. She also was able to extract rhodium complexes, using organic solvents, and demonstrate that they were bimetallic.
Good moved up the academic ranks to become the Boyd Professor of Chemistry at New Orleans (1974–1978), the first woman to achieve the university's most distinguished rank. From 1978 to 1980, she returned to Baton Rouge to develop a new program as the Boyd Professor of Materials Science, Division of Engineering Research.
Good was one of the first people to use Mössbauer spectroscopy techniques for basic chemical research. Mössbauer spectroscopy enables researchers to study the interactions of gamma rays with matter, observing very small differences in the energy of electrons within atoms. This data can be used to identify the molecular structure of complicated compounds containing metal ions.