Marsha I. Lester
American physicist
Marsha Isack Lester is an American physical chemist and the Edmund J. Kahn Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. Lester uses both theoretical and experimental methods to study the physical chemistry of volatile organic compounds present in the Earth's atmosphere. Her work focuses on the hydroxyl radical and Criegee intermediates.
Education
Lester graduated from William Allen High School in Allentown, Pennsylvania. In 1976, she received a B.A. from Douglass Residential College, an institution for women at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. In 1981, she earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University in the laboratory of George W. Flynn. Her thesis was Vibrational Relaxation Dynamics in Bulk Gases and Supersonic Molecular Beams. From 1981 to 1982, she performed postdoctoral work as a National Science Foundation fellow at Bell Laboratories.
Career
Lester was the chair of the Division of Laser Science of the American Physical Society. She also worked for American Chemical Society and was the chair of the Department of Energy's Council for Chemical and Biochemical Sciences.
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