Mary Archer

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Mary Doreen Archer, Baroness Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born Mary Doreen Weeden, on 22 December 1944) is a British scientist specialising in solar power conversion. She studied chemistry at St Anne's College, Oxford, and then physical chemistry at Imperial College London, before becoming a lecturer at Cambridge University. From 1988 to 2000 she was Chairman of the National Energy Foundation, which promotes renewable energy. She is now its President ^[1]. In 2002 she was appointed Chairman of Addenbrooke's NHS Trust, Cambridge.

In 2002 she gave the Melchett Lecture on Realistic opportunities for renewables: innovative technology.

Mary Archer is better known to the general public as the wife of the novelist and former politician Jeffrey Archer, whom she married in 1966. When he was granted a life peerage in 1992, she gained the title Lady Archer of Weston-super-Mare. In 1987 she gave evidence at the High Court in a libel case brought by her husband against the Daily Star newspaper. During his summing up at the end of the trial, Judge Bernie Caulfield infamously asked: "Has she elegance? Has she fragrance? Would she have, without the strain of this trial, radiance?"^[2]^[3] In 2001, when Jeffrey Archer was accused of perjury in the earlier trial, she appeared at the Old Bailey to defend him.^[4] Jeffrey Archer was subsequently convicted and imprisoned for perjury. She is reported to have once said, "Jeffrey has a gift for inaccurate precis".^[5]

In 1994, Archer was a non-executive director of Anglia Television at a time when it was the target of a takeover bid. Following reports from the London Stock Exchange, the Department of Trade and Industry appointed inspectors on February 8, 1994 to investigate possible insider dealing contraventions by certain individuals including her husband. No charges were brought.

She and Jeffrey have two children, William and James.

She lives in the Old Vicarage, Grantchester, near Cambridge, the former home immortalised by Rupert Brooke in a poem of that title. She is a patron of the Rupert Brooke Society. Archer also serves as President of the Guild of Church Musicians.