Mary MacArthur

Mary MacArthur, Ph.D., was a Canadian scientist who performed research on the principles of the successful dehydration and freezing of fresh foods. She performed this research while employed by the federal government of Canada’s Department of Agriculture at the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa, Ontario.[1][2] In 1952 she was the first woman to be named as Fellow of the Agricultural Institute of Canada (FAIC) for her contributions to Canadian agriculture.

Biography

Mary MacArthur was born in Glasgow, Scotland. She came to Canada as a child and her family settled in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. She became interested in botany at an early age.[1][2]

She obtained her B.Sc. from Acadia University, Nova Scotia in 1933 and her Ph.D. at Radcliffe College (affiliated with Harvard University) in 1937.[1][2]

Career

After graduation, Dr. MacArthur was an Assistant Professor of Botany at a woman's college in Elmira, New York, from 1937-38. In 1938 she accepted a position as an Agricultural Scientist, Horticulture Division, at the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa, Canada. Her early specialty was plant histology and cytology.[3] She became well known for her leadership of Canadian research into dehydration, which included fundamental research on methods for determining the inactivation of enzymes in plant tissues prior to dehydration. She had a large dehydration tunnel built in Ottawa, Ontario in 1942,[3] in which several hundred experiments were carried out. Before the end of the Second World War she published a paper on the freezing of commercially packaged asparagus, strawberries and corn.[3] She is credited with identifying that vegetables needed blanching to inactivate enzymes before dehydration.[4] She worked jointly with scientists at Kentville, Nova Scotia who provided her with the dehydrated vegetables for further analysis in Ottawa, Ontario.[4] This was an important activity during the war years as many fruits and vegetables had to be dehydrated and shipped to Europe for the war effort.[3]

Honours and awards

In 1952, Mary MacArthur was the first woman to become a member of the Agricultural Institute of Canada [1][2]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 http://innovationcanada150.ca/2016/05/mary-macarthur-pioneer-in-food-dehydration/
  2. 1 2 3 4 http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs076/1101807863158/archive/1102741199785.html#LETTER.BLOCK5
  3. 1 2 3 4 T.H. Anstey, Agriculture Canada. One Hundred Harvests, Research Branch, Agriculture Canada, 1886-1986. Research Branch, Agriculture Canada, Horticulture Series No. 27, 1986. p. 252-256.
  4. 1 2 MacArthur, Mary. 1948. The effect of method of freezing, type of pack and storage on asparagus tissue. Sci. Agr. 28, 166.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/9/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.