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Her excellence in scientific research resulted in fellowships and grants from many agencies in the USA. One of her interests was Temperature-dependent Sex Determination (TSD) in freshwater turtles and I remember when she was presenting her data (where she had named each of the turtle with the appropriate name depending on temperature - boy names for cold temperature and girls names for the hot temperature embryos) in the First World Congress of Zoology in Canterbury, Kent in 1990; the eminent herpetologist Dr. Carl Gans paid her compliments for her work! When the seven species of turtles were included in the endangered list, Marie wanted to see if TSD work could be used for consevation in future. When it came to be known that the largest population of olive ridleys nest in Orissa, she came to India in pursuit of TSD work in olive ridleys. Altogether Marie made seven extended trips to India (1978-1986). She visited my laboratory in the early 1980’s and was surprised to see a fully fledged lab for developmental biology. Orissa has such a reputation as a poor state in India that she thought that no facilities will be available to do research here and was planning to carry turtle eggs to Bhopal (central India) for incubation! This started our long association and she practically opened up the window for us to the exciting world of the olive ridleys which nest in Orissa in large numbers. Altogether she visited our lab four times, once as a visiting professor of our university and taught us the basics of incubation and handling of the delicate turtle embryos. We were able to determine the male and female determining temperatures of the olive ridleys (Mohanty-Hejmadi, P. and M. T. Dimond. Temperature dependent sex determination in the olive ridley turtle. Progress in Developmental Biology, Part A, pages 159-162, Alan R. Liss, Inc. presented in the 10th International Congress of Developmental Biologists at Los Angeles, U.S.A.).

I also had a chance to visit her several times in Trinity college and enjoyed her warm hospitality. Her last visit was to attend the strategy meeting for the Northern Indian Ocean marine turtles in Bhubaneswar in 1997 at the ripe old age of 81! This was the type of commitment she had for the overall survival of the marine turtles! She was very well known in Bhubaneswar and even developed a skill in our local language Oriya and loved to surprise us with her linguistic skills. Our last communication was in 1999 when I talked to her on the phone from Maryland and she mentioned that because of her failing health she would move to Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur retirement facility where she breathed her last peacefully on the night of September 19, 2003.

Many people must have noticed the gentle Dr. Dimond moving around in different fora including sea turtle meetings. Marie was as gentle and enduring as a turtle. In Hindu scriptures, turtles, especially marine turtles (Kurma), have been revered and are also known to be Stritapragnya - meaning calm, enduring and treasure of knowledge. With her inobtrusive pursuit of knowledge and experience for several decades (almost a century!), Marie definitely fits the category.