Dorothy Hansine Andersen

Dorothy Hansine Andersen (1901 to 1963) was an American physician and pathologist who first identified and named cystic fibrosis. Born in Asheville, North Carolina, she earned her medical degree at Johns Hopkins in 1926 and, unable to find a surgical residency as a woman, turned to anatomy and pathology, later joining Columbia University and Babies Hospital in New York. In 1935 an autopsy on a young girl recorded as a celiac death showed clogged lungs and cysts in the pancreas, and she gathered almost fifty similar cases. Her 1938 paper described cystic fibrosis as a disease in its own right, separate from celiac disease, and she went on to show it was inherited as a recessive trait and to help develop diagnostic tests and treatments. She also first described glycogen storage disease type IV, known as Andersen disease. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2002.