Two women with York County, Pa., roots excelled in the medical laboratory
Spring Grove, Pa., native Mary B. Gibbs became internationally known as a researcher. ‘You get medical researchers together and they’d say, “If Betty Gibbs had been at the table, we’d have this AIDS things whipped,” ‘ her daughter said. York County native M. Elaine Eyster also gained a widespread reputation for her work on hemophilia and AIDS. Also of interest: York, Pa.-born Edwin Shneidman, suicide prevention pioneer, dies in Los Angeles and Pennsylvanian Daniel Drawbaugh: ‘The Edison of the Cumberland Valley’ and Area native shares Nobel for Medicine.
Still of the trail of graduates of William Penn Senior High School who have achieved on the national stage.
And also on the search for scientists and other researchers from York County.
We took a step forward in both goals, as found in an entry in my “Never to be Forgotten:”
M. Elaine Eyster graduated from York High in 1952… .
She became chief of hematology, the study of blood, at Hershey Medical and professor of medicine at Penn State’s College of Medicine.
She pioneered the study of people with hemophilia and AIDS.
She was named to the William Penn High School Hall of Fame in 1976, the first woman to gain the honor since the hall opened in 1963.
And then there is Mary B. Gibbs, born in Spring Grove and a high school graduate at age 15.
Betty Gibbs earned a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins in hematology. After heading the Hopkins hospital lab, she moved to Walter Reed Institute of Research, earning her doctorate in immunochemistry and later headed the institute’s immunochemistry lab.
“It was tough to be a woman doctor in the ’50s and ’60s, but to be a medical researcher, a scientist, was even tougher,” Gibbs’ daughter, Deborah Kirk, said after Gibbs’ death in 1998.
Betty Gibbs was known for her brilliance.
“You get medical researchers together and they’d say, ‘If Betty Gibbs had been at the table, we’d have this AIDS things whipped,” her daughter said.
Researchers with York County roots:
– Add Penn State researcher Herschel Leibowitz to long list of York countians who excelled in research.
– York, Pa.-born Edwin Shneidman, suicide prevention pioneer, dies in Los Angeles
– Pennsylvanian Daniel Drawbaugh: ‘The Edison of the Cumberland Valley’
– Area native shares Nobel for Medicine.
– Few know it, but digital computing’s first pioneer George Stibitz was born in York, Pa.
– York, Pa.-born Edwin Shneidman, suicide prevention pioneer, dies in Los Angeles.
– Author with York County ties: Learned the brain inside and out in writing ‘How We Decide’
– Who was Phineas Davis of York City school fame?.
– Who was Edgar Fahs Smith of York City middle school fame?
– Add Larry Bowers name to long list of scientists with York links
