Mary Locke Petermann isolated and worked out the structure of animal ribosomes, organelles that are now known as the sites of protein synthesis in cells. She began her original investigation of the particles (for a time they were known as "Petermann's particles") because they were interfering with her studies of DNA and RNA. Her work was fundamental and pioneering; her continued work established the importance of ions in stabilizing ribosomes and elucidated ribosomal transformations.

Peterman was born in Laurium, Michigan, on February 25, 1908, one of three children and the only daughter of Albert Edward and Anna Mae Grierson Petermann. Her mother was a graduate of Ypsilanti State Teachers' College. Her father, a graduate of Cornell University, became a lawyer for Calumet and Hecla Consolidated Copper Company in Calumet, Michigan, after World War I; he later was president and general manager. The Petermann family lived in a large company house...