In Memoriam: Thérèse Wilson, 1925-2014

Thérèse Wilson, who was a chemist at Harvard university for more than half of a century, died late last month in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was 88 years old.

Dr. Wilson was a native of Brussels, Belgium. She earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the Free University of Brussels in 1952. She came to Harvard in 1954 on a Fulbright grant. A year later, she married E. Bright Wilson Jr., the Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry at Harvard.

After taking time off to have three children, she returned to Harvard to conduct research in chemistry and molecular and cellular biology. She was an expert in chemiluminescence and bioluminescence. She was the co-author of Bioluminescence: Living Lights, Lights for Living (Harvard University Press, 2013). The book was published a year before her death, when Dr. Wilson was 87 years old.