Mary Walpole Marzke, 83, passed away on September 3, 2020. She was educated at the University of California at Berkeley, obtaining her B.A., followed by an M.A. from Columbia University in New York City. She returned to U.C. Berkeley and received her Ph.D. in the field of Physical Anthropology in 1964. She and her husband, Robert, who obtained his Ph.D. at Columbia, moved to North Carolina, where Mary taught Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1970 they moved to Arizona where Robert is a professor in the Physics department at ASU. Mary focused her first years in Arizona on raising their three children.

Mary joined the ASU faculty as an Adjunct Visiting Professor in 1978, a part-time Associate Professor in 1982, and as a full-time Assistant Professor of Anthropology in 1989. She earned tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 1992 and became Full Professor in the Anthropology Department in 1998, where she served until her retirement in 2004 as Professor Emerita in Anthropology. She took a multidisciplinary approach to her research and enjoyed collaborating with experts within and outside of her field. She was recognized world-wide for her expertise on the evolution of the human hand. Mary was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science as well as an honorary member of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand.



Mary is survived by three children and five grandchildren. She is memorialized at the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in Tempe, AZ. (Source: Arizona Republic)