Florence Sabin, 1871-1953

Sabin in 1922. Photo credit - photographer Doris Ulmann, Library of Congress

Medical scientist and a pioneer for women in science and public health, the first woman member at the National Academy of Sciences.

Sabin was born in Central City, Colorado, in a mining site, where her father worked as an engineer. When she was 7 years old, her mother died, and soon after, she and her sister moved to live with their grandparents in Vermont. As a child, she wanted to be a pianist, but as she grew up, she set her mind on science. After graduation, she enrolled in the all-women Smith College and earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology. Afterward, she taught math at a high school to earn tuition money for graduate school.

At 25, Sabin attended Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her determination and observational skills caught the attention of the anatomist Franklin P. Mall, who encouraged her to focus on two significant projects – producing a model of a newborn’s brain stem and the development of newborn’s lymphatic system. Upon graduation, she gained an internship at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and in the following year, she won a fellowship in the Department of Anatomy at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. At 35, she began to teach in the hospital’s department of Anatomy, and within three years, she got promoted to an associate professor. At the age of 46, she was appointed professor of embryology and histology and became the first woman to serve as a full professor at a medical college. Four years late, she became the first female president of the American Association of Anatomists, where she worked mainly on researching the origins of blood vessels.

At the age of 54, Sabin left Johns Hopkins to concentrate on her research, becoming the head of the Department of Cellular Studies at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in NYC. That same year, she became the first female member of the National Academy of Science and a member of the research committee of the National Tuberculosis Association. She dedicated the next 12 years researching immune cells and the effects of foreign substances on the formation of antibodies.

After her retainment, she accepted a request to chair a subcommittee on health in Colorado. In this position, she lobbied for health care legislation. Working tirelessly for this cause, she assisted the passing of the “Sabin Health Laws,” which modernized the state’s public health as well as dealing with other health issues such as tuberculosis treatment, public sanitation, and the standardization of milk quality. At age 77, she became Denver’s manager of health and charities. Throughout the years, she published more than 100 scientific papers, numerous book chapters, two medical books, and a biography of her mentor Franklin Paine Mall.

This post is also available in:

Español

We hope you enjoyed this article.
Please support us so we can publish more herstories about pioneer women.
Donate

We hope you enjoyed this article.
Please support us so we can publish more herstories about pioneer women.
Donate

 

“All we women need to do to exert our proper influence is just to use all the brains we have.”

“All we women need to do to exert our proper influence is just to use all the brains we have.”

Fun Facts

  • She was one of fourteen women in her class at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
  • Her work on baby’s brain stem, titled An Atlas of the Medulla and Midbrain, became a popular medical text.
  • During her term as Denver’s manager of health and charities, she donated her salary to medical research.
  • She was the only female member at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, where she served as a department president.
  • She was part of a group of women working to build a women's hospital in New York, in a mission to provide medicine jobs to women.
  • She was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan.
  • She was never married or had children.
  • The Department of Medicine in The University of Colorado is named in her honor.
  • A statue of her is Colorado’s representative at the National Statuary Hall Collection.
  • One of the four colleges at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is named in her honor.

Awards

  • Lasker Award (1951)
  • Inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame (1985)

Creations By and About Her

This post is also available in: Español

Category: Academy & Education and Health
Tags: Scientist

Shop & Support

Donate & Support
 
Our feminist project of wanderlust and equality-aspired community maps the HerStories of worldwide wonder women.
Explore the website for excellent guided tours, travel tips, unique landmarks, fun girlfriend getaways, events, and in-depth articles about gender, equality, space, and (not-told-enough) female legacy.

About the Project

 

Charlotte-Blake-Brown-WWP
Health

Charlotte Blake Brown, 1846-1904

A medical pioneer in late 19th century West Coast.

Charlotte Amanda Blake, nicknamed Lotte, was born in Philadelphia. In her childhood the family moved often following missionary work, living in Maine, California, and Chile. At age 20, she graduated from Elmira College in New York. The following year she married and worked as a nurse. After giving birth to her third child, she left to attend the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. When she graduated, Blake Brown returned to her family in the Bay Area. In 1875, at the age of 30, she co-founded together with Dr. Sara E. Brown and Dr. Martha E. Bucknell, the Pacific Dispensary for Women and Children in San Francisco. It was a unique institution – employing strictly all-female staff and serving only women and children patients. Five years after its incorporation, the dispensary opened West Coast’s first Training School for Nurses. It later became San Francisco’s Children’s Hospital. In addition to serving as a physician and surgeon, she wrote eighteen articles for scientific journals. Her famous paper “The Health of Our Girls” (1896) proved the link between lifestyle and poor health with teenage girls. Blake Brown was also an innovator – inventing a milk sterilizing device and establishing a registry bank of data on cancer patients. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Ping Tom Memorial Park Chi Che Wang WWP
Science & Technology

Chi Che Wang, 1894-1979

Scientist, teacher, and the founder of the Chicago Chinese Women’s Club.

Born in Soochow, China, in 1894. She was sent to the US by her parents to receive a better education. At the time, only a few women were studying in universities, and even less so minority women. By 1918 she received a PhD in nutrition and chemistry from the University of Chicago. She worked as a researcher in several institutes and hospitals in the US and considered a pioneer in her field. Wang participated in many civic efforts in Chicago; her most known one was the foundation of the Chicago Chinese Women’s Club in 1937, which she kept active for over a decade. The club did well in fundraising, as well as in helping the American efforts in World War II, and in promoting women’s civil rights. Chi Che Wang Playlot Park in Chicago was named in her honor in 2004. It is located less than two miles from the research headquarters at Children’s Memorial Hospital, one of the places where Wang worked and promoted science. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Chien Shiung Wu WWP
Science & Technology

Chien-Shiung Wu, 1912-1997

A pioneer Chinese-American experimental physicist. Known as the First Lady of Physics.

Chien-Shiung Wu was born in Liuhe, China. Her parents supported her curiosity and interests and believed in equal education for all their children, regardless of gender. She first studied at Ming De School, a girls’ school her father had founded, and at 10, she went to a women’s boarding school that included a teacher training program. This school’s curriculum allowed her to cultivate her growing passion for science. At the time, government regulations ruled that teacher-training college students must serve as schoolteachers for one year before continuing to academic studies. So, she taught at a public school in Shanghai, administrated by the famous philosopher Hu Shih, who became her mentor and father figure. During her free time, she taught herself mathematics, and in 1930, she enrolled at the National Central University in Nanjing, studying mathematics and later switching to physics. After graduating, she worked as an assistant at Zhejiang University and as a researcher at the Institute of Physics of the Academia Sinica. In 1936, at 24, she was accepted to the University of Michigan and moved to the US. Upon her arrival, she discovered that the institute was highly discriminating against women, denying them access via the front entrance. Wu decided to study at a more liberal university and enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. An exceptional student, she was chosen by the famous Italian physicist Emilio Segrè to work with him in his beta decay studies that later significantly contributed to the development of nuclear bombs. In 1940, Wu completed her Ph.D. and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa but didn’t get a faculty position. She remained at Berkeley as a post-doctoral fellow at the Radiation Laboratory for two years. In 1942, at 30, she married fellow physicist Luke Chia-Liu Yuan. The couple moved to the East Coast, where she worked as an assistant professor and later associate professor at Smith College. In 1944, she accepted a position at Princeton University, becoming the first female faculty member of its Physics Department. That same year, she joined the research team of the Manhattan Project, which worked on the atomic bomb development. Based on her Ph.D. dissertation, Wu helped to determine the separation process of uranium into U-235 and U-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion and by that to improve the Geiger counters for the detection of radiation and the enrichment of uranium in large quantities. After WW2, Wu remained at Columbia University, becoming the first woman to serve as a tenured physics professor at Columbia. In 1956, physicists Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang asked her to conduct an experiment proving that the conservation of parity did not apply during beta decay. Though referred to as the “Wu experiment,” she didn’t receive any recognition when Chen and Yang received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 for this theory. In the next three decades until her retirement in 1981, she worked on many theories that often crossed over to other scientific fields, including research on the molecular changes in red blood cells that cause sickle-cell anemia, research on magnetism, and Bell’s theorem, in which she confirmed the interpretation of quantum mechanics. In 1975, at 63, she became the first woman to serve as president of the American Physical Society and the first woman to be awarded the National Medal of Science in Physics. In her later years, Wu renewed her activism and became an advocate for various fights and causes. She protested against the imprisonment of the in-laws of physicist Kerson Huang and the journalist Lei Chen in Taiwan, which with her help, was eventually released. She spoke against gender discrimination, especially in the academic world, and promoted teaching STEM subjects to all students, regardless of gender, race, or background. She died following a stroke at the age of 85. Per her wish, her ashes were buried in the courtyard of the Ming De School. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
Dixy-Lee-Ray-WWP
Science & Technology

Dixy Lee Ray, 1914-1994

A scientist and politician, the first female Governor of Washington State.

Born as Marguerite Ray in Tacoma, Washington, and when turning 16, changed her name to “Dixy Lee” in homage to Robert E. Lee. Ray was always fascinated by nature and eventually followed her passion and studied Biology and Zoology. She was the valedictorian of her class and continued to study for her Master’s Degree and afterward for a Doctorate. After graduation, Ray taught science in public schools and at 31, started teaching at the Zoology Department of the University of Washington. Dixy Lee Ray had a colorful personality, unconventional lifestyle and she was known as a person who could “make science interesting,” so she was offered to host a weekly television program on marine biology. Her popularity led her to become the manager of the Pacific Science Center, where she used a police whistle to run off hippies. She saved the center from bankruptcy since under her guidance, it became an interactive learning museum. Ray supported nuclear power, and at age 59, she was appointed to chair the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. In 1977, when she was 63 years old, Ray entered politics as a Democrat and became the first woman to be elected Governor of Washington State. She served as the 17th Governor, and during her tenure, she balanced the State budget and oversaw its first full funding program for basic education. Nevertheless, she alienated fellow Democrats due to her support in atomic power as well as controversial political decisions such as allowing supertankers to dock in Puget Sound. Ray lost the following elections and retired from political life, but she continued to give lectures, publish articles, and she co-authored two books about the Environmentalist Movement. This post is also available in: Español Read more...
View all

 

*Disclaimer: Please be aware that the information on this page is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. Learn more here.

Skip to content