Rebecca Lancefield

Rebecca Lancefield with Walter Bauer and Maclyn McCarty (right), 1960

Rebecca Craighill Lancefield (born January 5, 1895 in Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island , New York , † March 3, 1981) was an American microbiologist . She mainly dealt with streptococci and their connection with rheumatic fever .

Her name is known for the Lancefield classification she introduced to classify β-hemolytic streptococci.

education

Lancefield attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts . In 1918 she joined the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research , to which she remained associated throughout her life. She studied at Columbia University in New York , where in 1925 the doctoral degree Ph.D. attained. Her future husband Dr. Donald E. Lancefield, like her, was a graduate student at that university.

Career and further life

In 1943 she became president of the Society of American Bacteriologists and in 1961 she became the first female president of the American Association of Immunologists . Lancefield held a professorship at Columbia University from 1958 to 1965, where she was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1973 . She was also appointed to the National Academy of Sciences in 1970 .

On Thanksgiving 1980, she fell and broke her hip, permanently limiting her mobility. The following year, Rebecca Lancefield died at the age of 86.

literature

• Maclyn McCarty: Rebecca Craighill Lancefield 1895-1981 . In: National Academy of Sciences (Ed.): Biographical Memoirs . tape 57 . National Academy Press, Washington D. C. 1987, ISBN 0-585-27280-8 ( nasonline.org [PDF]).
• Elizabeth M. O'Hern: Rebecca Craighill Lancefield, Pioneer Microbiologist . In: ASM News . tape 41 , no. 12 , 1975, p. 805-810 ( asm.org [PDF]).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ RC Lancefield (1933): A serological differentiation of human and other groups of hemolytic streptococci. In: J Exp Med . 57 (4). Pp. 571-595. PMID 19870148