Chemists from Massachusetts

Richard Frederick Heck (August 15, 1931 – October 10, 2015) was an American chemist noted for the discovery and development of the Heck reaction, which uses palladium to catalyze organic chemical reactions that couple aryl halides with alkenes. The analgesic naproxen is an example of a compound that is prepared industrially using the Heck reaction.

Arthur Dehon Little (December 15, 1863 – August 1, 1935) was an American chemist and chemical engineer. He founded the consulting company Arthur D. Little and was instrumental in developing chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is credited with introducing the term unit operations to chemical engineering and promoting the concept of industrial research.

Carolyn Ruth Bertozzi (born October 10, 1966) is an American chemist. Bertozzi is known for founding a new field of chemistry: bioorthogonal chemistry. At Stanford University, she holds the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professorship in the School of Humanities and Sciences. Bertozzi is also an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and is the former Director of the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience research center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She received the MacArthur "genius" award at age 33. In 2010, she was the first woman to receive the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Prize faculty award. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2005), the Institute of Medicine (2011), and the National Academy of Inventors (2013). In 2014, it was announced that Bertozzi would lead ACS Central Science, the American Chemical Society's first peer-reviewed open access journal that offers all content free to the public.

Lucy Weston Pickett (January 19, 1904 – November 23, 1997) was a Mary Lyon Professor and Camille and Henry Dreyfus Chair in Chemistry at Mount Holyoke College.

Ann Boody Moser (born 1940) is an American biochemist specializing in neurology. She researches the development of therapies for adrenoleukodystrophy. Moser is an associate professor emerita in neurology at the Johns Hopkins University. She is a research associate in neurology and the co-director of the peroxisomal diseases laboratory at the Kennedy Krieger Institute.

Ruth Goldthwaite Capen (May 7, 1893 – June 15, 1974) was an American chemist, employed in the United States Department of Agriculture.

William Jacob Knox Jr. (January 5, 1904 - July 9, 1995) was an American chemist at Columbia University in New York City and one of the African American scientists and technicians on the Manhattan Project. Knox held an unprecedented position, serving as the only African American supervisor for the Manhattan Project. Knox is credited for nuclear research of gaseous diffusion techniques used for the separation of uranium isotopes. Knox's efforts in the development of uranium contributed to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945.

Lynda Marie Jordan (born 20 September 1956) is an American biochemist, ordained minister, and CEO & founder of A Place to Heal Ministries, Inc. (APTHM). She was the third Black woman to receive a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was a Ford Fellow at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, an associate professor of chemistry at North Carolina A&T State University, and the first woman to be invited to the MLK Visiting Professor program at MIT. Jordan was also the first person at Harvard University to complete a Master of Public Health and Master of Divinity simultaneously.

Mary Frances Leach (March 22, 1858 – 1939) was an American chemist and professor of chemistry and hygiene.

Leonora Bilger (3 February 1893 – 19 February 1975, née Neuffer) was an American chemist who studied nitrogenous compounds. She was a noted teacher and administrator at the University of Hawaii for the majority of her career.