R.E. Marker collected papers

Russell Earl Marker was born on March 12, 1902 in Hagerstown MD. He received his B.S. degree from the University of Maryland in 1923 and his M.S. in physical chemistry in 1924. He went to work for the Naval Powder Factory in Indian Head, MD but moved to New York in 1926 to work at the Ethyl Gasoline Corporation in Yonkers. While there he invented the octane rating system for gasoline and his work so impressed Simon Flexner, President of the Rockefeller Institute in New York City that he hired Marker to do chemical syntheses for its researchers. He left Rockefeller Institute in 1934 to take up a position in the chemistry department of Pennsylvania State University where he was free to pursue his own research into hormones. Here he synthesized progesterone, sarsaspogenin and diosgenin. When he failed to find American backers for his work he set up shop in Mexico City, and March, 1944, in partnership with Emeric Somlo and Frederico Lehmann, founded Syntex. The partnership did not work out and, in 1945, Marker left to found another company, Botanica-Mex. In 1949 he left Botanica-Mex as well to start an entirely new career crafting reproductions of 18th-century silver objects. He died in Mexico City on March 3, 1995.