Ruth L. Kirschstein
American pathologist
Ruth Lillian Kirschstein (12 October 1926 – 6 October 2009) was an American pathologist and science administrator at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Kirschstein served as director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, deputy director of NIH in the 1990s, and acting director of the NIH in 1993 and 2000-2002.
She was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Institute of Medicine. In 2002, Congress renamed the NIH graduate student fellowship program to the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award in honor of Kirschstein's work at the NIH.
Biography
Kirschstein was born to a family of Russian Jewish descent in Brooklyn, New York in 1926. Although she had trained as a classical pianist, she pursued medicine, graduating in 1947 from Long Island University and earning a medical degree from Tulane University in 1951. She interned in medicine and surgery at Kings County hospital and completed medical residencies in pathology at Providence Hospital in Detroit, Tulane University Hospital, and the Clinical Center at the NIH.
Family
She was married for 59 years to Alan S. Rabson, a pathologist and a deputy director of the National Cancer Institute.
Kirschstein's only child, Arnold B. Rabson, was born in 1955, the year she and her husband arrived at the NIH.
Research
Kirschstein joined NIH in 1955. She studied clinical pathology, laboratory medicine, virally-induced cancer and developed the safety test for the polio vaccines following the 1955 Cutter Incident, in addition to working on the safety of the measles vaccine.
In 1972, Kirschstein became deputy director of the Division of Biologics Standards, a research division that was transferred from NIH to the Food and Drug Administration, where she investigated the safety of the artificial sweetener cyclamate. When she returned to the NIH in 1974, Kirschstein became the first woman to direct an institute when she was appointed the director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS).
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