Helen Ranney


Helen Margaret Ranney was an American doctor and hematologist who made significant contributions to research on sickle-cell anemia.

Early life

Ranney was born in Summer Hill, Cayuga County, New York, where her parents ran a dairy farm. Her mother was a teacher and both her parents encouraged her in her studies and pursuing a professional career. She attended a one-room school as a child, and later attended Barnard College with initial plans to study law; however, it was here that she decided to study medicine, saying "Medicine attempts to fix what it studies." She initially faced barriers to her continuing a medical education at Columbia, based on her gender, but policy changes during World War II allowed for her admission to the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.

Career

Ranney was a professor at Harvard Medical School. She was also a staff physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
She was the first woman to serve as president of the Association of American Physicians, and of the American Society of Hematology. She was also one of the first women to be admitted to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and was the first woman honored as a Distinguished Physician of the Veterans Administration. Her research on hemoglobin started in 1953. She was the first to use paper electropheresis for separating human hemoglobin, work which helped in understanding the inheritance of sickle-cell disease. In 1960 she co-founded the heredity clinic at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Ranney was a faculty member and the first female head of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. In 1973, she was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1975.

Awards, Honors, and Memberships