Sara Josephine Baker, MD
Dr. Sara Josephine Baker (November 15, 1873 – February 22, 1945) was an American physician notable for making contributions to public health, especially in the immigrant communities of New York City. Her fight against the damage that widespread urban poverty and ignorance caused to children, especially newborns, is perhaps her most lasting legacy. In 1917, she noted that babies born in the United States faced a higher mortality rate than soldiers fighting in World War I, drawing a great deal of attention to her cause. Her work organizing the first child hygiene department under government control led to the lowest infant death rate in any American or European city during the 1910’s.
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Alan L. Hart, MD
Dr. Alan L. Hart (October 4, 1890 – July 1, 1962) was an American physician, radiologist, tuberculosis researcher, writer and novelist. In 1918, he was one of the first trans men to undergo hysterectomy and gonadectomy in the United States and lived the rest of his life as a man. He pioneered the use of X-Ray photography in tuberculosis detection. Dr. Hart was instrumental in developing tuberculosis screening programs at the time that TB was the largest disease killer in the US. Dr. Hart’s efforts with screening programs saved thousands of lives. Utilizing an X-Ray system Dr. Hart developed, doctors managed to cut the tuberculosis death toll down to one-fiftieth from previous levels.
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Louise Pearce, MD
Dr. Louise Pearce (March 5, 1885 – August 10, 1959), a physician and pathologist, was one of the foremost female scientists of the early 20th century. Her research led to a cure for trypanosomiasis (African Sleeping sickness) in 1919. In 1920, when a severe outbreak of the disease broke out in the Belgian Congo, (modern day Zaire), Dr. Pearce, then 35 years old and attracted by the adventures of field research, volunteered to go alone to Leopoldville to test the new drug. The Rockefeller Institute sent Pearce, “trusting her vigorous personality to carry out an assignment none too easy for a woman physician and not without its dangers.” Studying the effect of each dose of tryparsamide on more than seventy patients, Pearce saw the parasites were completely eradicated within a few weeks of the treatment. Belgian officials, impressed and grateful for her results, awarded her the Ancient Order of the Crown and elected her a member of the Belgian Society of Tropical Medicine.
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Bruce Voeller, PhD
Bruce Voeller, PhD (May 12, 1934 – February 13, 1994) was an American biologist and AIDS researcher who pioneered the use of nonoxynol-9 as a spermicide and topical virus-transmission preventative. He won a five-year fellowship at the Rockefeller Institute to complete his doctoral studies in biochemistry, developmental biology and genetics, before becoming an associate professor there. Before the 1980s, AIDS was known by various names, including GRIDD (Gay Related Immune Defense Disorder). Because this term was inaccurate, Voeller coined the term “Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.” He established the Mariposa Foundation conduct research in the field of human sexuality and to find ways to reduce the risks of diseases related to it.
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John Ercel Fryer, MD
Dr. John Ercel Fryer (November 7, 1937 – February 21, 2003) was an American psychiatrist and gay rights activist best known for his anonymous speech at the 1972 American Psychiatric Association (APA) annual conference where he appeared in disguise and under the name Dr. Henry Anonymous. This event has been cited as a key factor in the decision to de-list homosexuality as a mental illness from the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Fryer was the first gay American psychiatrist to speak publicly about his sexuality.
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