Beatrix 'Betty' Hamburg

摘要

Beatrix "Betty" Hamburg held professorships and leadership positions at Stanford University, Harvard Medical School, and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. She influenced public policy as a member of US president Jimmy Carter's Commission on Mental Health and, in the 1990s, as president of the William T Grant Foundation, a non-profit organisation that focuses on reducing inequality and helping young people. After "retiring," she went back to work and spent 15 years, late in her life, as DeWitt Wallace distinguished scholar at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. She was a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine in London. But 78 years ago, in 1940, Hamburg was a scared girl a few weeks shy of her 17th birthday, when she arrived at the elite Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, for her first semester of studies. At the time, Vassar was an all women's school, and all the women were white. Hamburg was African-American.