Wanda K. Farr solved a major scientific mystery in botany by showing that the substance an important compound found in all plants, is made by tiny, cellular structures called plastids. The discovery was all the more notable because the process of cellulose synthesis had been obscured by the very techniques that previous researchers were using to study the phenomenon under the microscope.

Farr was born Wanda Margarite Kirkbride in New Matamoras, Ohio, on January 9, 1895, the daughter of C. Fred and Clara M. Kirkbride. Farr's father died of tuberculosis when she was a child, and her budding interest in living things was nurtured by her great- grandfather, Samuel Richardson, who was a prominent local physician. Farr had initially decided to attend medical school, but her family insisted she not become a doctor, fearing she too would be exposed to tuberculosis. Farr enrolled at Ohio University in Athens, where she...