Source: The New York Times
Dr. Mary Ellen Avery, a medical researcher who helped save hundreds of thousands of premature infants with a single, crucial discovery about their ability to breathe, died on Dec. 4 in West Orange, N.J. She was 84.
Children’s Hospital Boston made the announcement days after her death, but it was not widely disseminated.
Dr. Avery was the first woman to be appointed physician in chief at Children’s Hospital; the first woman to head a clinical department at Harvard Medical School; the first woman to be chosen president of the Society for Pediatric Research; and the first pediatrician to lead the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
But as she told Harvard Magazine in 1977, her principal contribution to medicine was in finding out why so many babies died at birth. The answer: their lungs lacked a foamy coating that enables people to breathe.
Categories: Health, Medicine, Research, Science, United States