In 2020, Women in Science at Rockefeller (WISeR) and the Women & Science Initiative commissioned a portrait by Brenda Zlamany titled “Five Trailblazing Women Scientists at The Rockefeller University.” This portrait, the University’s first depicting women scientists, was installed in the lounge of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Hall in 2022. Behind the scenes, a group of faculty members identified five women to be included in the portrait, on the basis that they were leaders in their field and had spent time at Rockefeller. Florence Sabin, Louise Pearce, Rebecca Lancefield, Gertude Perlmann, and Marie Daley were selected, and members of WISeR worked to recover their omitted history.
Florence Sabin (1871–1953)
Florence Sabin was a scientist, educator, and public advocate. After attending Smith College, she was admitted to Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1896. At Hopkins, Sabin took an interest in brain anatomy and published the textbook An Atlas of the Medulla and Midbrain under the guidance of Franklin Paine Mall. Sabin worked as a medical intern after she graduated and rose through the ranks, ultimately becoming the first woman professor at Hopkins’ medical school. She became the first elected woman president of the American Association of Anatomists and the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1924 and 1925, respectively. She accepted a position as a research scientist at the Rockefeller Institute in 1925 and led multi-institutional studies into pulmonary tuberculosis. At the time, little was known about this infectious disease despite it being a significant public health concern in many urban areas. The work produced by Sabin and her collaborators significantly advanced knowledge of the immune system’s interaction with tuberculosis bacteria. Sabin would continue working at Rockefeller until her retirement in 1938. During her retirement, she taught community members about tuberculosis in Denver, Colorado and worked with public health officials to advocate for better hospital conditions and funding. Her advocacy led to the passing of “Sabin Health Laws” in 1947.
Louise Pearce (1885–1959)
Louise Pearce began her science education at Stanford, studying physiology at a time when few women were doing so. She earned her M.D. at Johns Hopkins in 1912, following in the footsteps of Florence Sabin. After graduation, she worked as a house officer (similar to today’s medical resident positions) at Johns Hopkins Hospital and was the only woman on staff. She wrote to Simon Flexner, the director of the Rockefeller Institute, requesting a research position. Soon after, Pearce became the first female researcher at the Institute and studied the use of arsenic compounds to treat trypanosomiasis, also known as African sleeping sickness. Following promising animal studies, she conducted the first human trials of tryparsamide for the treatment of trypanosomiasis in the Belgian Congo. Patients who responded to the treatment were observed to have a quick clearance of the parasite from blood and lymph nodes, a return to normal cerebrospinal fluid in advanced cases, and improved mental and physical states. Due to this work, she was awarded the Belgian Order of the Crown in 1921 and the King Leopold II Prize in 1953. Pearce was promoted to an associate member position at the Rockefeller Institute in 1923 and would later work on developing animal models to study cancer. Notably, her collaboration with Wade Hampton Brown led to the discovery of a transplantable rabbit cancer model known as the Brown-Pearce tumor, which was the only transplantable rabbit tumor at the time. In 1946, Pearce left Rockefeller to become the president of the Woman’s Medical College in Philadelphia.
Rebecca Lancefield (1895–1981)
Rebecca Lancefield graduated from Wellesley College in 1916 with a degree in zoology and pursued a master’s degree at Columbia University. Although she received a scholarship to attend Teachers College, Rebecca’s passion for bacteriology drove her to enroll in all the available bacteriology courses. Upon completion of her master’s degree, she worked as a technician for Oswald Avery and Alphonse Dochez at the Rockefeller Institute, where she published her first co-authored paper describing the classification of b-hemolytic streptococcal strains in 1919. Her interest in streptococci continued throughout her Ph.D. Due to her professor’s resistance to working with female scientists, however, she was directed to conduct the majority of her thesis work at the Rockefeller Institute under Homer Swift. Under Swift’s guidance, Lancefield studied the underlying cause of rheumatic fever. After she earned her Ph.D. in 1925, she worked on the classification of streptococci at Rockefeller. During World War II, Lancefield worked with the Office of Scientific Research and Development to identify strep strains and supply antisera to military labs. In 1943, she was elected president of the Society of American Bacteriologists and was promoted to full professor at the Rockefeller Institute in 1958. She was also the first elected woman president of the American Association of Immunologists and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1970.
Gertrude Perlmann (1912–1974)
Gertrude Perlmann attended the German University of Prague and earned a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics. At twenty-seven, she emigrated to the United States and joined the department of physical chemistry at Harvard. She left Harvard in 1946 to continue her research at Rockefeller as a Commonwealth Fund Fellow. Perlmann published many articles on protein isolation and properties and collaborated with Rebecca Lancefield on the isolation and characterization of type-specific M antigen from Streptococcus strains. She moved up the ranks at Rockefeller and became a full professor in 1973, one year before her death. Perlmann is regarded as a pioneer of protein biochemistry, as she was one of the first scientists to emphasize the effect of phosphate groups on protein structure. Additionally, she used electrophoresis to discover the structure of egg albumin. Her background in physics and chemistry was the foundation for her groundbreaking research in pepsin protein chemistry at Rockefeller. She identified structural differences between pepsin and pepsinogen, its inactive form, and investigated how various factors influence enzymatic activity. In 1965, Perlmann was awarded the Garvan Medal of the American Chemical Society.
Marie Daly (1921–2003)
Marie Daly earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1947 and became the first Black American woman to earn a doctoral degree in chemistry. While at Columbia, Daly studied how pancreatic amylase breaks down food. After receiving her Ph.D., Daly taught chemistry at Howard University and later joined the Rockefeller Institute to work with Alfred Mirsky on a postdoctoral research grant from the American Cancer Society. Her collaboration with Mirsky and Vincent Allfrey led to the discovery that RNA is needed for protein production. Daly left Rockefeller in 1955 and joined the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where she studied the biochemistry of cholesterol and its relationship to hypertension with her collaborator Quentin Deming. She later joined Albert Einstein College of Medicine as an assistant professor in 1960 and would move up the ranks to a tenured appointment as full professor in 1971. Outside of the lab, Daly constantly fought for diversity and inclusion in science. She led efforts to recruit and train Black students at Albert Einstein, established a fund for Black science students at her alma mater, Queens College, and was known for mentoring minority students.