Joyce Yagla Corey, Emerita Professor of Chemistry at the University of Missouri–St Louis, died on July 21, 2024. Professor Corey was a member of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty of University of Missouri–St Louis (UMSL) from 1968 to the end of her life, the first woman to earn tenure in the department. She had taught previously at Thomas More University, at the University of Cincinnati, and at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Joyce Y Corey
Joyce was born in Waverly, Iowa and educated at Radcliffe College, received a B.Sc. at University of North Dakota–Grand Forks and Ph.D. in Chemistry at University of Wisconsin. She was internationally known for her research on the elements directly below carbon in the periodic table, especially silicon. She published about 120 peer-reviewed papers and reviews, and helped to organize international conferences in her field. She was most proud of the undergraduate and graduate students she trained in her laboratory, one of whom (Dr Janet Wilking) became a tenured faculty member at UMSL.
Her research resulted in her receiving the prestigious St Louis Award (1985) and the Midwest Award (2000), both administered by the American Chemical Society, St Louis Section. Her teaching was recognized by the Amoco Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching in Mathematics/Sciences in 1977.
Joyce was very well traveled, and each year was delighted to spend part of the summer aat Flood’s Cove in Friendship, Maine. For her 80th birthday, she visited Easter Island and climbed an Andean glacier in Chile with a former student.
She will be missed greatly by many friends and students. Memorial gifts may be made to the Eugene and Joyce Corey Undergraduate Scholarship Fund at the University of Missouri–St Louis. To plant a tree in her memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.
—submitted by her UMSL colleague James Bashkin
“Computers and the physics of complex biological systems”
