I am F. Peter Boer’s only sibling, his sister. Our mother Flora was extraordinary, achieving a master’s degree in chemistry, rare for a woman in the 1930s. She nurtured Peter’s scientific brilliance from infancy forward until dying too young to see him through high school and university with the highest scientific academic achievements. His father, a physician, and his mother, a teacher, committed their lives to their two children having the best academic educations possible, so each could grow into their own financial independence. When his mother could not find work in chemistry because of sexual discrimination in the 1940s, she educated herself into a niche teaching specialty, teaching a classroom of handicapped, vision poor, disabled, and limited life span (aka orthopedic disabled) children in an elementary classroom of the times in the 1950s. My brother and I attended the elementary school where our mother taught for at least five years, while fighting cancer. At her untimely death, the entire school of teachers with at least 23 cars followed the funeral cortège to the grave.
I am F. Peter Boer’s only sibling, his sister. Our mother Flora was extraordinary, achieving a master’s degree in chemistry, rare for a woman in the 1930s. She nurtured Peter’s scientific brilliance from infancy forward until dying too young to see him through high school and university with the highest scientific academic achievements. His father, a physician, and his mother, a teacher, committed their lives to their two children having the best academic educations possible, so each could grow into their own financial independence. When his mother could not find work in chemistry because of sexual discrimination in the 1940s, she educated herself into a niche teaching specialty, teaching a classroom of handicapped, vision poor, disabled, and limited life span (aka orthopedic disabled) children in an elementary classroom of the times in the 1950s. My brother and I attended the elementary school where our mother taught for at least five years, while fighting cancer. At her untimely death, the entire school of teachers with at least 23 cars followed the funeral cortège to the grave.