Focus
Spotlight
May 27, 2002
Portraits of HMS Women Faculty Leaders Unveiled
Under the new photographic portraits in the Waterhouse room are (l to r) Shirley Driscoll, Elizabeth Hay, Graham Ramsay (the photographer), Lynne Reid, and Mary Ellen Avery. (Photo by Liza Green, HMS Media Services)
An unveiling ceremony was held May 14 to celebrate the addition of five portraits of women faculty leaders to the others that hang in the Benjamin Waterhouse faculty room in Gordon Hall. The event commemorated the first time women have been included among the ranks of portraits of notable Medical School faculty in that venue. Those faculty leaders honored were Mary Ellen Avery, Elizabeth Hay, Shirley Driscoll, Lynne Reid, and Grete Bibring. Bibring died in 1977; the other four honorees are shown above.
Avery has held the position of Thomas Morgan Rotch professor of pediatrics at HMS since 1974 and was head of the Department of Pediatrics at Children's Hospital from 1974 to 1984. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences and was recently chosen as president-elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1991, Avery received the National Medal of Science from President Bush.
Hay became the first woman full professor in a preclinical department when she was named the Louise Foote Pfeiffer professor of embryology in 1969. From 1975 to 1993, she was the head of the Department of Anatomy and Cellular Biology, making her the first woman to head a preclinical department at HMS. Hay is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
In 1975, Driscoll was named professor of pathology and chief of pathology at the Boston Hospital for Women, Lying In Division. She was the first chair of the Joint Committee on the Status of Women, the first chair of the faculty conduct committee, and the first chair of the committee to develop guidelines for investigators in scientific research.
Upon her arrival at HMS in 1975, Reid was described as one of the world's foremost pulmonary morphologists and has held the position of S. Burt Wolbach professor of pathology ever since. From 1975 to 1989, she was head of the Department of Pathology at Children's Hospital. Reid has chaired the Joint Committee on the Status of Women and served on the executive committee of the 50th Anniversary Scholars in Medicine Fellowship Program.
A student of Sigmund Freud, Bibring was named head of the Department of Psychiatry at Beth Israel Hospital in 1946. Then in 1961, she became the first woman to be appointed full professor in a clinical department at HMS.