Stanford Medicine is paving the way for women in leadership, and their remarkable achievements are taking center stage as the institution prepares to celebrate Women in Medicine Month this September. One shining example of this progress is Dr. Shipra Arya, a professor of surgery whose groundbreaking work has changed the landscape of elder patient care…
Doctor Jane Cooke Wright was a trailblazer in the field of cancer research and changed the face of medicine with her contributions to chemotherapy. She is noted for developing the technique of using human tissue culture rather than laboratory mice to test the effects of potential drugs on cancer cells…
British chemist Dorothy Hodgkin was a pioneering scientist best known for her work in developing the crystallography of biochemical compounds, which became essential for structural biology. Her most influential discoveries include the confirmation of the structure of penicillin and determining the complicated structure of vitamin B12…
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi is a French virologist and scientist credited, along with Luc Montagnier and Harald zur Hausen, with identifying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the cause of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Her fundamental work in the identification led to her sharing the 2008 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Montagnier and zur Hausen…
As the daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie, two of the world’s most famous scientists, Irène Joliot-Curie went on to have her own spectacular scientific career. Along with her husband Frédéric, she discovered the first-ever artificially created radioactive atoms, which paved the way for a myriad of medical advances, especially in the fight against cancer…
In the past, prenatal problems and complications caused by the trauma of birth went undetected and killed or weakened countless newborns. Dr. Virginia Apgar changed the world of medicine with her system devised to fight against that kind of infant mortality…
Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn is a Nobel prize-winning molecular biologist and biochemist. She is famous in her field for her work with the telomere, a structure at the end of chromosomes that protects the chromosome, and in 1984 she co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the telomere…
Dr. Christine Grady is a nurse-bioethicist and a senior investigator who currently serves as the Chief of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. She has authored more than 175 papers in the fields of biomedical and bioethics literature and authored or edited several books, including, “The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics”…
Physician and public health advocate Dr. Antonia Coello Novello, M.D. made history in 1990 when she was instated as the first woman and first Hispanic to serve as Surgeon General of the United States. She held the position from 1990 to 1993. Novello was born in 1944 in Fajardo, Puerto Rico…
Ruth Westheimer, better known as Dr. Ruth, is a sex therapist who has written 45 books and for decades has delivered advice on television, radio, and the web. Her fascinating and tumultuous past led to a career that has been recognized with inductions into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame, the German-American Hall of Fame, and the Radio Hall of Fame…
