Helen M. Free

• Born: February 20, 1923
• Birthplace: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Died: May 1, 2021
• Place of death: Elkhart, Indiana

American chemist

Free developed new medical testing procedures, including an easy-to-use, inexpensive dipstick test that made it possible for diabetics to check their own blood glucose.

Primary field: Chemistry

Primary invention: Dipstick blood sugar test

Early Life

Helen Mae Murray was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on February 20, 1923. She was the daughter of James Summerville Murray, a coal company salesman, and Daisy Piper Murray. When she was six years old, her mother died in an influenza epidemic. She began her education in the Youngstown, Ohio, public schools and then attended high school in Poland, Ohio, a suburb of Youngstown, graduating in 1941. She so admired a high school English teacher that she planned to follow in her footsteps, majoring in English in college and eventually teaching English and Latin to high school students. She decided to attend the College of Wooster, a small but distinguished liberal arts school, where she had attended a summer camp sponsored by the Presbyterian church.

After Murray’s dormitory housemother pointed out that there was likely to be a shortage of scientists because so many men had left school to serve in World War II, Murray made a fateful decision: She changed her major to chemistry. It was a subject she liked and also one in which she excelled. At the end of her freshman year, she was awarded the William Z. Bennett Prize in Chemistry. During her senior year, she applied for a research fellowship at the Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh; meanwhile, she was interviewed by the head of quality control at Miles Laboratories in Elkhart, Indiana, which was the American subsidiary of Bayer. As her graduation date approached, she had had no response from Mellon. Therefore, though she would have preferred research to quality control, Murray decided to accept the position offered her by Miles, and she began work there shortly after her graduation from Wooster in May 1944. A few weeks later, she was accepted by Mellon. Though she kept pressing her boss at Miles to give her a research assignment, for the next two years she was kept busy with quality control and with the development of procedures. Once the war ended, however, Miles embarked on new research projects, and Murray was at last able to fulfill her dream.

Life’s Work

Among the new scientists hired to implement Miles Laboratories’ programs was Alfred H. Free, a native of Ohio with a doctorate in biochemistry from Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. During the war, Free had worked on a process for transmitting blood plasma to field hospitals and had also contributed to the development of antibiotics. When Murray learned that the biochemists had a research position open, she set up an interview with Free. He hired her on the spot, and they began working closely together. It was not long before their professional relationship became a personal one, and on October 18, 1947, Murray and Free were married. During the next five decades, they would collaborate on important research projects, developing new procedures for medical testing. They would also have six children—Eric, Penny, Kurt, Jake, Bonnie, and Nina.

Helen Free is best known for her role in the development of thedipstick, a new method of urinalysis that made self-testing for diabetes possible. After their product Clinistix appeared in 1956, the Frees continued their work, refining the product so that one dipstick could be used to test for a number of different substances in urine. Their studies led to the publication in 1975 of the book Urinalysis in Clinical Laboratory Practice, which was recognized as a definitive work on the subject. However, the Frees did not limit their research to testing for diabetes; they also sought ways to utilize self-testing for other diseases. The fact that Helen Free received seven patents for clinical laboratory tests indicates the level of her achievements.

Meanwhile, Helen Free was steadily assuming more responsibilities at Bayer. In 1976, she became director of specialty test systems. In 1978, after receiving a master’s degree in management/health care administration from Central Michigan University, she became director of marketing services in the research products division. After retiring in 1982, she remained a consultant to the firm, then known as Bayer Diagnostics. Until 1996, she also remained a member of the adjunct faculty at Indiana University in South Bend, where she had taught for twenty-one years.

In 1980, Free was awarded the Garvan Medal from the American Chemical Society (ACS), an annual award that recognizes distinguished service to chemistry by women. That same year, she received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Wooster. Both that school and Central Michigan University awarded her honorary doctor of science degrees. In 1995, the Frees’ collaborative efforts brought them the Laboratory Public Service National Leadership Award. Helen Free was inducted into the Engineering and Science Hall of Fame in 1996 and the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2000.

Early in her career, Free became active in the ACS, where her primary goal was to make the public aware of the important role that chemistry plays in everyday life. From 1987 to 1992, she chaired the National Chemistry Week Task Force, and she also founded a group that worked to establish an International Chemistry Celebration. In 1993, Free was the first person without an earned terminal degree to be elected president of the ACS. During her tenure, she spoke on the subject of outreach to more than one hundred local sections of the ACS and also was frequently interviewed by the news media, emphasizing the importance of chemistry in the modern world. In 1995, she was the first recipient of an award established in her honor by the American Chemical Society, the Helen M. Free Award for Public Outreach.

Alfred Free died in 2000. Though Helen was in her late seventies, she continued to be active in promoting the cause she had embraced. In addition to receiving a National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Barack Obama in 2009, she saw their achievements in the development of diagnostic test strips honored by the ACS as a National Historic Chemical Landmark in 2010. On May 1, 2021, she died at an assisted living facility in Elkhart at the age of ninety-eight.

Impact

Helen and Alfred Free’s invention of the dipstick made it possible for diabetes tests to be conducted outside the laboratory—in doctors’ offices, for example, and even by patients themselves. The dipstick process had a number of advantages: It was inexpensive; the results were available immediately; and patients who did their own testing could have much more control over their own lives. Though dipsticks were originally developed for use in diabetes testing, the invention was increasingly used for other diseases. Moreover, the acceptance of the concept of self-testing radically changed the concept of medical care. Patients can now take much of the responsibility for their own treatment, a change that most welcomed.

Helen Free’s achievements as an inventor enabled her to become an influential advocate for her own field of chemistry and, more generally, for science and mathematics. Appalled by what she saw as the neglect of those subjects in the classroom, she not only publicized their importance by being involved in awareness programs such as National Chemistry Week, National Science and Technology Week, and National Medical Laboratory Week but also took her message into communities, where she spoke to civic groups and visited schools, working personally with both students and teachers. Free’s goal was to inspire young people to dedicate their lives to scientific research, so that they might some day make significant medical discoveries or develop processes that significantly improve medical treatment.

Bibliography

Beaser, Richard S. The Joslin Guide to Diabetes: A Program for Managing Your Treatment. 2d rev. ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.

Bohning, James J. “Diagnosing Disease with Fizz.” Chemical Heritage 21 (Fall, 2003): 12, 42-44.

Free, Alfred H., and Helen M. Free. Urinalysis in Clinical Laboratory Practice. Cleveland, Ohio: CRC Press, 1975.

Free, Helen M. “Self-Testing: A Boom That Won’t Hurt Labs.” Medical Laboratory Observer 21 (May, 1989): 41-46.

Galmer, Andrew. Diabetes. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006.

Gellene, Denise. "Helen Murray Free Dies at 98; Chemist Developed Diabetes Test." The New York Times, 3 May 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/science/helen-murray-free-dead.html. Accessed 2 Sept. 2022.

Mirsky, Steve. “Number One: Thanks to This Woman, You Can Read It in the Paper.” Scientific American 291 (December, 2004): 118.