Tsai-Fan Yu
American medical academic (1911-2007)
Tsai-Fan Yu (Chinese: 郁采蘩; pinyin: Yù Cǎifán; Wade–Giles: Yü Ts'ai-fan, 1911 – March 2, 2007) was a Chinese-American physician, researcher, and the first woman to be appointed as a full professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She helped to develop an explanation for the cause of gout and experimented with early drugs to treat the disease which are still in use today.
Early life and education
Yu was born in Shanghai, China in 1911. At age 13, her mother died and her father worked three jobs to help support her educational ambitions. As a sophomore at Ginling College in China, Yu was admitted into Peking Union Medical College on full scholarship and received her medical degree with highest honors in 1939. In the same year, Yu became the Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at Peking Union Medical College.
Career and research
While in China, Yu researched the various diseases found in citrus fruits and beans. Yu came to New York in 1947 and became a U.S. citizen in 1950. She taught at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons until joining the staff faculty at Mount Sinai Medical Center in 1957 where she would spend the rest of her career. In 1973, Yu became the first female to be appointed as a full professor at Mount Sinai Hospital, one of the oldest and largest teaching hospitals in The United States.
“Tsai-Fan Yu” enters the record as american medical academic (1911-2007). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tsai-Fan, American and medical can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16017940. VIAF identifies the subject as 69481068. The Library of Congress control number is n82134478. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1911, 2007, 1939 and 1947.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tsai-Fan Yu” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.