Pearl Mao Tang (1922– )

By Lakshmeeramya Malladi

A licensed obstetrician and gynecologist, Pearl Tang worked to improve the health of women and children in Maricopa County, Arizona, during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her work with the Maricopa County Health Department ranged from immunizations to preventing cervical cancer. Tang obtained federal grants and community support to establish various child and maternal health clinics throughout Maricopa County as chief of the Maricopa County Bureau of Maternal and Child Health.

Created 2017-06-23

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Leon Chesley (1908-2000)

By Sarah Patel

Leon Chesley studied hypertension, or high blood pressure, in pregnant women during the mid-twentieth century. Chesley studied preeclampsia and eclampsia, two hypertensive disorders found in approximately five percent of all US pregnancies. In New Jersey and New York, Chesley devoted over forty years to researching preeclampsia and eclampsia. Chesley conducted several long-term studies using the same group of women beginning from their pregnancies.

Created 2017-06-19

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Sidney Q. Cohlan (1915-1999)

By Bianca Zietal, Chanapa Tantibanchachai

Sidney Q. Cohlan studied birth defects in the US during the twentieth century. Cohlan helped to discover that if a pregnant woman ate too much vitamin A her fetus faced a higher than normal risk of teratogenic effects, such as cleft palate. A teratogen is a substance that causes malformation of a developing organism. Cohlan also identified the teratogenic effects of several other substances including a lack of normal magnesium and prenatal exposure to the antibiotic tetracycline.

Created 2017-06-18

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Betty Friedan (1921–2006)

By Sepehr Abdi-Moradi

Betty Friedan advocated for the advancement of women's rights in the twentieth century in the United States. In 1963, Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, which historians consider a major contribution to the feminist movement. Friedan also helped establish two organizations that advocated for women's right, the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1963 and, in 1969 the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NAARL). Friedan argued for legalizing access to abortion and contraception, and her advocacy helped advance women's reproductive rights.

Created 2017-06-15

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Austin Bradford Hill (1897-1991)

By Carolina Abboud

During the twentieth century, Austin Bradford Hill researched diseases and their causes in England and developed the Bradford Hill criteria, which comprise the minimal requirements that must be met for a causal relationship to be established between a factor and a disease. Hill also suggested that researchers should randomize clinical trials to evaluate the effects of a drug or treatment by monitoring large groups of people.

Created 2017-06-15

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Sheldon Clark Reed (1910-2003)

By Cassidy Possehl

Sheldon Clark Reed helped establish the profession of genetic counseling in the US during the twentieth century. In 1947 Reed coined the term genetic counseling to describe the interaction of a doctor explaining to a patient the likelihood of passing a certain trait to their offspring. With physicians being able to test for genetic abnormalities like cystic fibrosis, Reed helped trained individuals give patients the tools to make informed decisions. In 1955 Reed published the book Counseling in Medical Genetics.

Created 2017-06-10

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Bernard Sachs (1858-1944)

By Tiffany Nardi

Bernard Sachs studied nervous system disorders in children in the
United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the
late 1880s, Sachs described the fatal genetic neurological disorder
called amaurotic family idiocy, later renamed Tay-Sachs disease. The
disorder degrades motor skills as well as mental abilities in
affected individuals. The expected lifespan of a child with
Tay-Sachs is three to five years. In addition to working on
Tay-Sachs disease, Sachs described other childhood neurological and

Created 2017-05-31

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

William Smellie (1697–1763)

By Yvette Tran

William Smellie helped to incorporate scientific medicine into the process of childbirth in eighteenth century Britain. As a male physician practicing in childbirth and female reproductive health (man-midwife), Smellie developed and taught procedures to treat breech fetuses, which occur when a fetus fails to rotate its head towards the birth canal during delivery. Throughout his career, Smellie compiled a wealth of information about female anatomy in his writings. He modified medical technology such as the obstetrical forceps, an instrument used to maneuver the fetus during childbirth.

Created 2017-05-30

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Josef Warkany (1902–1992)

By Bianca Zietal, Chanapa Tantibanchachai

Josef Warkany studied the environmental causes of birth defects in the United States in the twentieth century. Warkany was one of the first researchers to show that factors in the environment could cause birth defects, and he helped to develop guidelines for the field of teratology, the study of birth defects. Prior to Warkany’s work, scientists struggled to explain if or how environmental agents could cause birth defects. Warkany demonstrated that a deficiency or excess of vitamin A in maternal nutrition could cause birth defects.

Created 2017-05-26

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Hermann Joseph Muller (1890-1967)

By Kevin Gleason

Hermann Joseph Muller studied the effects of x-ray radiation on genetic material in the US during the twentieth century. At that time, scientists had yet to determine the dangers that x-rays presented. In 1927, Muller demonstrated that x-rays, a form of high-energy radiation, can mutate the structure of genetic material. Muller warned others of the dangers of radiation, advising radiologists to protect themselves and their patients from radiation. He also opposed the indiscriminate use of radiation in medical and industrial fields.

Created 2017-05-25

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Matthew Stanley Meselson (1930– )

By Victoria Hernandez

Created 2017-05-23

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Julia Clifford Lathrop (1858–1932)

By Katherine Madgett

Julia Clifford Lathrop was an activist and social reformer in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries and the first chief of the United States Children’s Bureau. In that capacity, she conducted demographic studies to identify links between socioeconomic factors and infant mortality rates. Lathrop mobilized the effort to increase birth registration and designed programs and publications to promote infant and maternal health throughout the US.

Created 2017-05-22

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Alfred Henry Sturtevant (1891–1970)

By Kevin Gleason

Alfred Henry Sturtevant studied heredity in fruit flies in the US throughout the twentieth century. From 1910 to 1928, Sturtevant worked in Thomas Hunt Morgan’s research lab in New York City, New York. Sturtevant, Morgan, and other researchers established that chromosomes play a role in the inheritance of traits. In 1913, as an undergraduate, Sturtevant created one of the earliest genetic maps of a fruit fly chromosome, which showed the relative positions of genes along the chromosome.

Created 2017-05-20

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

William Withey Gull (1816-1890)

By Alexis Abboud

William Withey Gull studied paraplegia, anorexia, and hormones as a physician in England during the nineteenth century. In addition to caring for patients, he described the role of the posterior column of the spinal cord in paraplegia, and he was among the first to describe the conditions of anorexia and of hypochondria. He also researched the effects of thyroid hormone deficiencies in women who had malfunctioning thyroid glands.

Created 2017-05-07

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Charles Raymond Greene (1901–1982)

By Bianca E. Zietal

Charles Raymond Greene studied hormones and the effects of environmental conditions such as high-altitude on physiology in the twentieth century in the United Kingdom. Green researched frostbite and altitude sickness during his mountaineering expeditions, helping to explain how extreme environmental conditions effect respiration. Greene’s research on hormones led to a collaboration with physician Katarina Dalton that culminated in the development of the theory that progesterone caused premenstrual syndrome, a theory that became the basis for later research on the condition.

Created 2017-04-27

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Adib Jatene (1929–2014)

By Daniella Caudle

Adib Jatene in Brazil was the first surgeon to successfully perform the arterial switch operation in 1975. The operation corrected a heart condition in infants called transposition of the great arteries (TGA). Left untreated, infants with TGA die, as their blood cannot supply oxygen to their bodies. Jatene’s operation became widely used to correct the condition. Aside from medical research, Jatene worked for years in politics and education, serving as Brazil’s minister of health and teaching thoracic surgery at the University of São Paulo.

Created 2017-04-20

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Stanley Alan Plotkin (1932– )

By Christian H. Ross

Stanley Alan Plotkin developed vaccines in the United States during the mid to late twentieth century. Plotkin began his research career at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he studied the rubella virus. In pregnant women, the rubella virus caused congenital rubella syndrome in the fetus, which led to various malformations and birth defects. Using WI-38 cells, a line of cells that originated from tissues of aborted fetuses, Plotkin successfully created RA27/3, a weakened strain of the rubella virus, which he then used to develop a rubella vaccine.

Created 2017-04-13

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Paul Eugen Bleuler (1857–1939)

By Jessica Resnick

Paul Eugen Bleuler studied autism and schizophrenia, among other psychiatric disorders, throughout continental Europe in the early twentieth century. Bleuler worked as a psychiatrist caring for patients with psychiatric disorders at a variety of facilities in Europe. In 1908, Bleuler coined the term schizophrenia to describe a group of diseases that cause changes in thought processes and behavior in humans as well as difficulties relating to the world.

Created 2017-04-06

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

George Nicholas Papanicolaou (1883–1962)

By Patsy Ciardullo

George Nicholas Papanicolaou developed the Pap test in the United States during the twentieth century. The Pap test is a diagnostic procedure used to test for cervical cancer in women. Papanicolaou’s work helped improve the reproductive health of women by providing an effective means of identifying precancerous cells and improving the likelihood of early treatment and survival of cervical cancer.

Created 2017-04-06

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Ignacio Vives Ponseti (1914-2009)

By Katherine Gandee

Ignacio Vives Ponseti developed a noninvasive method for treating congenital club foot in the US during the late 1940s. Congenital club foot is a birth deformity in which one or both of an infant's feet are rotated inward beneath the ankle, making normal movement rigid and painful. Ponseti developed a treatment method, later called the Ponseti method, that consisted of a series of manipulations and castings of the club foot performed in the first few months of life.

Created 2017-03-09

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Edward Charles Dodds (1899-1973)

By Alexis Abboud

Edward Charles Dodds researched the function and effects of natural and artificial hormones on the endocrine system in England during the twentieth century. Though he first worked with hormones such as insulin, Dodds focused on the effects of estrogen in the body and how to replicate those effects with artificial substances. In 1938, along with chemist Robert Robinson, Dodds synthesized the first synthetic estrogen called diethylstilbestrol.

Created 2017-03-06

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Karl Oskar Illmensee (1939–)

By Cheryl Lancaster

Karl Oskar Illmensee studied the cloning and reproduction of fruit flies, mice, and humans in the US and Europe during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Illmensee used nuclear transfer techniques (cloning) to create early mouse embryos from adult mouse cells, a technique biologists used in later decades to help explain how embryonic cells function during development. In the early 1980s, Illmensee faced accusations of fraud when others were unable to replicate the results of his experiments with cloned mouse embryos.

Created 2017-02-26

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Robert Guthrie (1916–1995)

By Meilin Zhu

Robert Guthrie developed a method to test infants for phenylketonuria (PKU) in the United States during the twentieth century. PKU is an inherited condition that causes an amino acid called phenylalanine to build to toxic levels in the blood. Untreated, PKU causes mental disabilities. Before Guthrie’s test, physicians rarely tested infants for PKU and struggled to diagnosis it. Guthrie’s test enabled newborns to be quickly and cheaply screened at birth and then treated for PKU if necessary, preventing irreversible neurological damage.

Created 2017-02-23

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago

Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943)

By Corey Harbison

Karl Landsteiner studied blood types in Europe and in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Landsteiner won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930 for detailing immunological reactions in the ABO blood group system. The ABO blood group system divides human blood into one of four types based on the antibodies that are present on each cell. Landsteiner's work with blood types led physicians to safely perform blood transfusions and organ transplants.

Created 2017-02-17

Last modified 7 months 3 weeks ago