Mary Marzke

1937 - 2020

Mary Marzke

Mary Walpole Marzke was born in Oakland, California on May 29, 1937 to Ronald and Doris Walpole, of Berkeley, California. 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. While at Columbia she met her future husband, Robert Marzke, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were married in Berkeley on June 23, 1962, and lived in New York for four years, until her husband obtained his Ph.D. at Columbia. They then moved to North Carolina, where she taught Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1970 their family moved to Tempe, Arizona where her husband held a position in the Physics department at Arizona State University and she focused her first years in Arizona on raising their three children. Dr. Marzke joined the Arizona State University 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 2006. She took a multidisciplinary approach to her research and enjoyed collaborating with experts within and outside of her field. She was also a beloved teacher and advisor to her many students. She was recognized world-wide for her expertise on the evolution of the human hand. Dr. Marzke 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. She passed away on September 3, 2020, after a 20-year battle with multiple myeloma, during which she was treated at the Mayo clinic in Arizona. She is survived by three children and five grandchildren. She is memorialized at the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany in Tempe, AZ where she was a parishioner for many years. Richardson Funeral Home, Tempe, Arizona is compassionately serving the Marzke family.