http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/b...f-permanent-press-renown-dies-at-97.htmlRuth Benerito, 97, Is Dead; Made Cotton Cloth Behave
By MARGALIT FOX
New York Times
October 7, 2013
Half a century ago, working quietly in a New Orleans laboratory, Ruth Benerito helped smooth the fabric of modern life. In so doing, she helped liberate people from hours of household drudgery.
A chemist long affiliated with the United States Department of Agriculture, Dr. Benerito helped perfect modern wrinkle-free cotton, colloquially known as permanent press, in work that she and her colleagues began in the late 1950s.
Widely available since the mid-1960s, wrinkle-free cotton is considered one of the most significant technological developments of the 20th century. For her role, Dr. Benerito was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2008.
Dr. Benerito died on Saturday at 97.
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Ruth Mary Rogan was born in New Orleans on Jan. 12, 1916. At 15, she entered H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, then the women’s college of Tulane University. She received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry there in 1935, followed by a master’s in the field from Tulane. She taught at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Va., and at Newcomb and Tulane, before earning a Ph.D. chemistry from the University of Chicago.
RIP.
