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Women In Health History

© Gretchen Malik

We continue our celebration to women in health history as we go In The Lab and salute some of the women who have contributed to the history of medicine through scientific research.

We begin with Nettie Maria Stevens who was the first to discover that differing chromosomal patterns determines if a baby will be born a boy or a girl. However, her position in the field of genetics have been largely ignored. The credit for her discovery was given to the two big names in the field of genetics in her time: her former Bryn Mawr college professor, Edmund B. Wilson ( who read her theory before publishing his own) and T.H. Morgan, the biologist with whom Wilson shared the Noble Prize for the discovery. Going forward, we celebrate Gertrude Belle Elion, a major player in the field of pharmacological research. She was not allowed to enter the male-dominated field of medicine because of World War II. Elion began her career as a high school chemistry teacher before beginning her position on the research staff at Burroughs Wellcome where she worked with George H. Hitchings. Together they developed a chemotherapy that does not damage healthy cells, which allowed her and others to develop many important drugs.

In 1988, Elion and Hitchings shared the Nobel Prize with English pharmacologist James Black, for pharmacological research that "introduced a more rational approach based on the understanding of basic biochemical and physiological processes."

Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, medical physicist and Nobel laureate co-invented a technique called "radioimmunoassay" or RIA which is now used to diagnose a wide range of conditions, including diabetes and hepatitis. She overcame many obstacles including gender discrimination and anit-Semitism. Yalow also received a Ph.D. in nuclear physics.

From one wonderful crusader to the next, Rita Levi-Montalcini, shared the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 1986. Her work was singled out as a "fascinating example of how a skilled observer can create a concept out of apparent chaos." Biochemist Montalcini received the Nobel Prize for her role in explaining how nerve cells grow in the embryo.

In her autobiography, Levi-Montalcini said she never wanted any part of what was expected of young girls growing up in Italy, early in the century. She received her doctorate a few years before World War II. After the war she emigrated to the United States and was naturalized as a citizen in 1956.

Another first started her career as a student of English literature. Rebecca Craighill Lancefield may have began as a English student but ended it by completing graduate and doctoral studies in biology. She is the first woman to serve as president of the American Association of Immunologists and is credited with discovering the key to identifying streptococci bacteria and classifying the more than sixty dangerous strains of the bacteria in a system that is still used today. Lancefield also proved that the same bacterium could cause a number of conditions, from sore throats to scarlet fever.

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