death_date work birth_place citizenship awards birth_date image article_title name
september 17 , 1954 university of chicago minneapolis , minnesota united states gold medal of the ama 1869 maudslye.png maud slye
 maud slye
maud slye

maud slye -lrb- 1869 -- september 17 , 1954 -rrb- was an american pathologist who was born in minneapolis , minnesota .
a historian of women and science wrote that slye '' ` invented ' genetically uniform mice as a research tool . ''
her work focused on the heritability of cancer in mice .
she was also an advocate for the comprehensive archiving of human medical records , believing that proper mate selection would help eradicate cancer .
during her career , she received multiple awards and honors , including the gold medal of the american medical association in 1914 and the gold medal of the american radiological society in 1922 .
slye received her undergraduate training at the university of chicago and brown university .
while at the university of chicago , she supported herself as a secretary for university president william rainey harper .
after a breakdown , she completed her studies at brown in 1899 .
after teaching , she began her postgraduate work in 1908 at the university of chicago , performing neurological experiments on mice .
she would remain at the university of chicago for the rest of her career .
after hearing of a cluster of cattle cancers at a nearby stockyard , she changed the focus of her research to cancer .
slye raised -- and kept pedigrees for -- 150,000 mice during her career .
in 1913 she first presented a paper before the american society for cancer research .
in 1919 she was selected as director of the cancer laboratory at the university of chicago .
in 1922 , she was promoted to assistant professor and became an associate professor in 1926 .
she retired , as a professor emeritus of pathology , in 1945 .
her belief that cancer was a recessive trait that could be eliminated through breeding caused clashes with fellow scientists , including c. c. little .
slye was devoted to her work .
a 1937 `` time '' account of her behavior at a science convention described her as `` high-spirited '' and quoted her as saying : `` i breed out breast cancers .
i do n't think we should feel so hopeless about breeding out other types .
only romance stops us .
it is the duty of scientists to ascertain and present facts .
if the people prefer romance to taking advantage of these facts , there is nothing we can do about it . ''
reluctant to leave her mice to the care of her assistants , she once went twenty-six years without a vacation .
she never married and spent her retirement reviewing data from her research .
she was buried in oak woods cemetery .
