Mary Ellen Avery

Mary Ellen Avery
Mary Ellen Avery
Born May 6, 1927(1927-05-06)
Camden, New Jersey
Nationality American
Fields Pediatrics
Institutions Harvard Medical School
Johns Hopkins University
McGill University
Alma mater Wheaton College
Johns Hopkins University
Notable awards National Medal of Science (1991)

Mary Ellen Avery (born May 6, 1927) is an American pediatrician. In the 1950s, Dr. Avery's pioneering research efforts helped lead to the discovery of the main cause of respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) in premature babies: her identification of surfactant led to the development of replacement therapy for premature infants and has been credited with saving over 830,000 lives.[1] In 1991 President George Bush conferred the National Medal of Science on Dr. Avery for her work on RDS.

Contents

Biography

Mary Ellen Avery was born May 6, 1927, in Camden, New Jersey. Her father owned a manufacturing company in Philadelphia and her mother was vice-principal of a high school. An early inspiration was pediatrician Emily Bacon, who lived in Avery's neighborhood. She greatly admired Dr. Bacon, who took Avery to see her first premature baby. "She kindly reached out to me in many ways, and I saw her life as more exciting and meaningful than most of the women I knew," Avery has recalled.

Graduating summa cum laude from Wheaton College in 1948 with a degree in chemistry, Mary Ellen Avery went on to earn a medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1952. Soon after graduating, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and it was during her recuperation that she became fascinated with how the lungs work. Rest and medication would cure her, but she went about the regime her own way. Once she realized she was exhibiting no symptoms, she decided to go to Europe with a friend. "I packed one suitcase of medication and another suitcase of clothes, and spent three months in Europe on a regime that I programmed for myself," Avery said. "It consisted of 12 hours in bed every night, and in the daytime mostly walking around and looking at exhibits and enjoying myself, but not anything strenuous."

Dr. Avery returned to Johns Hopkins for her internship and residency, then moved to Boston in 1957 for a research fellowship in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. At Harvard, she made a major discovery while comparing the lungs of infants who had died of RDS to those of healthy animals. "It's all because they had something they would have not needed before birth because they weren't using their lungs for ventilation before birth. But after birth, without it, they could not live more than a day or two. And therefore I found what was missing." What she had found was a foamy substance that she deduced must play a critical role. Dr. Avery's observation formed the basis of a breakthrough paper published in the American Journal of Diseases of Children in 1959. By 1995 there were 1,460 infant deaths a year in the U.S. from RDS, down from almost 10,000 a year twenty-five years earlier.

In 1960, Dr. Avery became an assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University and pediatrician in charge of newborn nurseries. She went on to serve as professor and chair of the department of pediatrics at McGill University in Montreal. In 1974, she joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School as professor of pediatrics. That same year she was the first woman named physician-in-chief at Boston's Children's Hospital, where she remained until 1985.

Awards and honors

References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter A". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterA.pdf. Retrieved 28 April 2011. 

External links

Link to Dr. Mary Ellen Avery on the site Scienceheroes.com http://www.scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=140&Itemid=139[2]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужен реферат?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Mary Ellen Avery — (* 6. Mai 1927 in Camden (New Jersey)) ist eine US amerikanische Medizinerin (Pädiatrie). 1959 entdeckte sie die Ursache des Atemnotsyndrom des Neugeborenen (Infant Respiratory Distress Syndrome, IRDS) bei Frühgeborenen, was Voraussetzung für die …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Avery (Familienname) — Avery ist der Familienname folgender Personen: Byllye Avery (* 1937), amerikanische Sozialreformerin Charles Avery (Schauspieler) (1873−1926), US amerikanischer Schauspieler und Regisseur Charles Avery (Künstler) (* 1973), schottischer Künstler… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Gillian Avery — Gillian (Elise) Avery is a British children’s novelist and literary historian.She was born in Reigate on September 30, 1926 and attended Dunottar School there. [Cadogan, 57.] . She worked first as a journalist, on the Surrey Mirror , then for… …   Wikipedia

  • Wheaton College (Massachusetts) — This article is about the college in Norton, Massachusetts. For the evangelical affiliated school, see Wheaton College (Illinois). Infobox University name = Wheaton College motto = That They May Have Life and Have it Abundantly established = 1834 …   Wikipedia

  • Harold Eugene Edgerton — Born April 6, 1903 (1903 04 06) Fremont, Nebraska Died …   Wikipedia

  • Michael Heidelberger — in 1950 Michael Heidelberger (April 29, 1888 – June 25, 1991)[1] was an American immunologist who is regarded as the father of modern immunology. He and Oswald Avery showed that the polysaccharides of pneumococcus are antigens, enabling h …   Wikipedia

  • Kelly Johnson (engineer) — Clarence Kelly Johnson Clarence Leonard Kelly Johnson Born February 27, 1910(1910 02 27) Ishpeming, Michigan, USA Died …   Wikipedia

  • Milton Friedman — Chicago School of Economics Born July 31, 1912(1912 07 31) Brooklyn, New York …   Wikipedia

  • Marshall Warren Nirenberg — Born April 10, 1927 New York C …   Wikipedia

  • Índice de líquido amniótico — El técnico de ecografías medirá los focos más grandes de líquido amniótico en cuatro secciones diferentes del útero y los sumará para comparar con el índice de líquido amniótico normal. El índice de líquido amniótico (ILA) es una evaluación de la …   Wikipedia Español

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”