Horstmann, Dorothy M. (1911–2001)

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Horstmann, Dorothy M. (1911–2001)

American epidemiologist and virologist. Born Dorothy Millicent Horstmann, July 2, 1911, in Spokane, WA; died Jan 11, 2001, in New Haven, CT; attended University of California at Berkeley; University of California at San Francisco, MD, 1940; never married.

Polio pioneer, showed that the polio virus reached the brain by way of the blood, a finding that upended previous thinking and helped make polio vaccines possible; was the 1st woman appointed a professor at Yale School of Medicine (1961) and the 1st woman to receive an endowed chair there (1969), which was in epidemiology and pediatrics; elected to National Academy of Sciences; served as president of Infectiouis Diseases Society of America.

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