Martha Greenblatt, a chemist, researcher, and faculty member at Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

, New Brunswick, New Jersey

New Brunswick, New Jersey

New Brunswick is a city in Middlesex County, New Jersey, USA. It is the county seat and the home of Rutgers University. The city is located on the Northeast Corridor rail line, southwest of Manhattan, on the southern bank of the Raritan River. At the 2010 United States Census, the population of...

, is the only female chair of a science department in the School of Arts and Science to date (Jan 2008). Greenblatt took the position of Chair of the Chemistry Department at Rutgers while pursuing research interests in solid state inorganic chemistry

Solid-state chemistry

Solid-state chemistry, also sometimes referred to as materials chemistry, is the study of the synthesis, structure, and properties of solid phase materials, particularly, but not necessarily exclusively of, non-molecular solids...

. She was also the recipient of the 2003 American Chemical Society

American Chemical Society

The American Chemical Society is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 161,000 members at all degree-levels and in all fields of chemistry, chemical...

’s Garvan-Olin Medal

Garvan-Olin Medal

The Francis P. Garvan–John M. Olin Medal is an annual award that recognizes distinguished service to chemistry by women chemists. The Award is offered by the American Chemical Society , and consists of a cash prize and a medal. The medal was designed by Margaret Christian Grigor.Any individual...

 – a national award given yearly to an outstanding woman chemist. In 2004, she became Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry at Rutgers.

Greenblatt has had a very significant life. A Holocaust survivor, she escaped from Soviet-occupied Hungary at the young age of fifteen. She came to New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 and attended high school in Brooklyn. In January 1962 she received a BSc (cum laude

Latin honors

Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the level of academic distinction with which an academic degree was earned. This system is primarily used in the United States, Canada, and in many countries of continental Europe, though some institutions also use the English translation of these...

) in Chemistry from Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College

Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...

 and she chose to work for the Chiclets

Chiclets

Chiclets is a brand of candy coated chewing gum made by Cadbury Adams. The colors of chiclets are: yellow, green, orange, red, white, and pink. The product's name is derived from Nahuatl word tziktli, in English chicle, the substance from which chewing gum was traditionally made...

 Chewing Gum Company in Long Island City as a chemist. She quickly grew bored with the work and began applying to graduate school. The chemistry department at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn

Polytechnic University of New York

The Polytechnic Institute of New York University, often referred to as Polytechnic Institute of NYU, NYU Polytechnic, or NYU-Poly, is the engineering and applied sciences affiliate of New York University...

 appealed to her and she chose it partly for its location near home. At the time, it had one of the best polymer facilities in the area, and the crystallography

Crystallography

Crystallography is the experimental science of the arrangement of atoms in solids. The word "crystallography" derives from the Greek words crystallon = cold drop / frozen drop, with its meaning extending to all solids with some degree of transparency, and grapho = write.Before the development of...

 lab was also highly rated. Greenblatt took the famous Introduction to Polymer from Professor Herman Marks; Rudy Marcus

Rudolph A. Marcus

Rudolph "Rudy" Arthur Marcus is a Canadian-born chemist who received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his theory of electron transfer. Marcus theory, named after him, provides a thermodynamic and kinetic framework for describing one electron outer-sphere electron transfer.He was born in...

 was her chemical physics

Chemical physics

Chemical physics is a subdiscipline of chemistry and physics that investigates physicochemical phenomena using techniques from atomic and molecular physics and condensed matter physics; it is the branch of physics that studies chemical processes from the point of view of physics...

 professor, who later received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...

for work he did at the Polytechnic Institute in those years.