Mary Helen Goldsmith
Mary Helen Goldsmith, a plant physiologist and longtime professor who helped create an undergraduate major in environmental studies at Yale, led the Marsh Botanical Garden for 16 years, and was Master (now Head of College) of Silliman College from 1987 to 1994, died at Whitney Center in Hamden, Connecticut on Oct. 2. She was 91.
She was professor emerita of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology and of forestry and environmental studies.
Goldsmith’s research focused attention on the critical role that plant hormones play in guiding plant growth and development, and in relaying information about the surrounding environment to plants. She made seminal contributions to the understanding of the transport of hormones through plant tissues and of the regulation of ion movement across cell membranes. Beyond her research and her teaching, she was a prominent leader nationally in all aspects of plant physiology and served a term as elected president of the American Society of Plant Physiologists (now known as the American Society of Plant Biologists).
Goldsmith came to Yale in 1963 at a time when there were far fewer women scientists on the faculty than there are today, and even fewer studying issues related to the environment. So Goldsmith stood out in several ways.
She was passionately devoted to developing undergraduate programs in the environment and played a key role in revitalizing the “second major” in environmental studies that, under her leadership, matured into a full-fledged Yale College major. As much as anyone else on Yale’s faculty at that time, she was a leader in nurturing students during a period when a growing number of students were awakening to the challenges facing the global environment.
Perhaps Goldsmith’s greatest contribution to Yale, however, was her 16 years as director of the Marsh Botanical Garden (MBG), a botanical garden and arboretum that offers support for university researchers, faculty, and students. In that role, she guided MBG through a period of restoration and development, enhancing its role as an educational resource for teaching at Yale.
As an article in the Yale Bulletin & Calendar of October 2001 noted, her plans for that early refurbishment of the garden recognized “the historical importance of the garden, which was designed by Beatrix Farrand, the first woman in the country to become a landscape architect. From the 1920s to the early 1940s, Farrand created the Marsh Botanic Garden as part of her overall design for the entire Yale campus.”
The gardens have continued to evolve since Goldsmith’s tenure as director, with a 2022 Master Plan that has reinvigorated it for the future for study, research, experimentation, and enjoyment. But without Goldsmith’s early attention to restoration, it would not have offered as much opportunity for study and pleasure in the ensuing years.
“Plants form the basis of every terrestrial ecosystem,” Goldsmith said in that 2001 article. “I’m always thinking about how to get students interested in plants and how they function in their environment. If students aren’t aware or don’t care, then I don’t think there’s much hope of saving the diversity of life we have here on earth.
“I’m satisfied if they go on and are just interested in plants for the fun of it,” she added. “That’s what’s wonderful about the [Marsh] garden — it can be enjoyed just for its beauty or for the possibilities it affords for scientific discovery and to further our understanding of our wonderfully fascinating and diverse plant life.”
In 1987 Goldsmith became the Master of Silliman College, where for eight years, with her husband Tim’s help and support, she oversaw the lives of hundreds of Yale students. True to form, she offered the Yale Student Environmental Coalition the space it desperately needed in Silliman’s basement, and even more importantly acted as a consultant, guide, and support to them.
Judith Krauss, professor emerita of nursing and the Head of Silliman College from 2000 to 2015, credited Goldsmith with “returning the beautiful Silliman courtyard to the original design of Beatrix Farrand,” and emphasized that she was “always grateful for its elegant yet functional beauty — the capacity to both define Silliman’s place in the university while welcoming exploration and play.”
Mary Helen Goldsmith was born in Boston and received her undergraduate degree from Cornell and her Ph.D. from Harvard. She was still in high school when she met her future husband after both were assigned roles in a school play. The couple went on to college and graduate school together and eventually both held roles as professors in Yale’s Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology.
Goldsmith is survived by her husband Tim, and by her two children and four grandchildren. Funeral services were private.
When Goldsmith retired from Yale, her colleagues fittingly bestowed on her, in a citation, “a virtual spray of the black-eyed Susans, sunflowers, goldenrods, asters, and meadow grasses from the Marsh Botanical gardens” — a fitting bouquet for one who had done so much for the garden and for all early studies of the environment at Yale.
