Margaret McCormick Doisy, named by Father General Pedro Arrupe as a Founder of the Missouri Province for her generous support of Saint Louis University, passed away Dec. 12.

The widow of Nobel Laureate and founder of Saint Louis University’s department of biochemistry and molecular microbiology Edward A. Doisy, Ph.D., Mrs. Doisy was instrumental in providing the largest gift in Saint Louis University’s history for the construction of the Edward A. Doisy Research Center which was dedicated Dec. 7, 2007.

“The Doisy family name has been woven into the fabric of Saint Louis University, and Margaret Doisy has been a generous champion of the university’s mission for decades,” said University President Father Lawrence Biondi SJ. “The Doisy legacy is immeasurable. They truly helped make SLU into the modern research university it is today.”

Then-president Father Paul Reinert SJ asked the provincial to petition the superior general of the Jesuits in 1976 to name the Doisys as Founders of the Province to recognize the fact that they were, even at that time, “without question the largest individual benefactor the University has ever had.” In Jesuit practice, the superior general honors a very small number of donors with the title “Founder of the Province” because their gifts are able to sustain or begin a major apostolic venture.

Mrs. Doisy received her bachelor of science degree from Saint Louis University and was an administrative assistant in the School of Medicine. Mrs. Doisy took her stewardship of the Doisy funds, which provided millions of dollars to research at SLU, very seriously.

Dr. Doisy won the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1943 for isolating vitamin K which stimulates the production of prothrombin, a major element in blood clotting. Early in his career he identified the hormones estrone and estradiol; these discoveries encouraged research in the field of endocrinology and led to a new field of organic chemistry, steroid compounds. This research led to his isolating vitamin K.

The Doisy name can be seen throughout SLU’s Medical Center campus. In addition to the Edward A. Doisy Research Center, Doisy Hall and the Margaret McCormick Doisy Learning Resource Center are named for the Doisys. The Edward and Margaret Doisy College of Health Sciences was endowed and dedicated by Mrs. Doisy in 2001. The department of biochemistry and molecular microbiology, where Dr. Doisy had taught for five decades, was renamed the Edward A. Doisy Department in 1955.