Hi all. I had the good fortune to meet Myrna Hagedorn while teaching with her organic chemist husband, Al, at Colorado College. Although she wasn't on the CC payroll in any form, "the Oracle" helped several of us understand strange things that we were seeing in our NMR data. This nickname became mystical to our "The Matrix" era students!
I've hybridized her obituary with some more NMR related info from her husband.
Myrna Lee Hagedorn passed away on 27 March with her husband Alfred by her side. She was 62.
After teaching and research positions at Michigan State, Columbia, and Rutgers Universities, Myrna found her niche as a spectroscopist at International Flavors and Fragrances in New Jersey, reaching the highest scientific level in the company. Her work on spectroscopic detection of adulterants in natural flavor materials was known internationally. At IFF, she developed techniques for quantitative, site-specific natural abundance deuterium nmr of natural
flavor materials, as a means of assessing adulteration. Although she published only one paper on this, her work was known internationally, and led to an invited presentation at a symposium at a national ACS meeting.
Structure determination by nmr was her forte, and was important to many IFF projects. Gilbert Stork, a consultant with IFF while Myrna was there, once stated "The oracle has spoken" when she provided an alternate structure to that proposed by one of the synthetic chemists. She also developed nmr methods for monitoring processes in the plant, when chromatographic and other spectroscopic methods were not suitable.
Besides showing her expertise in nmr, she became an accomplished chemical microscopist, with training at the McCrone institute.
While in New Jersey, she discovered synchronized swimming. She competed nationally at the masters level, and coached the Central Jersey Synchronettes and the Rutgers University club team. Here in Colorado she became the head coach of the Colorado Novas, and held numerous positions with the regional and national synchronized swimming sssociations. Last Fall, she was inducted into the USA Synchro Hall of Fame. Myrna will be remembered fondly by the hundreds of athletes she encouraged.
Donations in Myrna’s memory may be made to the United States Synchronized Swimming Foundation, www.synchrofoundation.com<
http://www.synchrofoundation.com>; USSSF, 132 E. Washington Street, Suite 820, Indianapolis, IN 46204 or to the Palmer Land Trust, P.O. Box 1281, Colorado Springs, CO 80901.
Janet A. Asper
Associate Professor, Chemistry
University of Mary Washington
1301 College Avenue
Fredericksburg, VA 22401
540-654-1143: 540-654-1081 fax
jasper_at_umw.edu<mailto:jasper_at_umw.edu>
Received on Mon Apr 23 2012 - 02:51:40 MST