Accolades: Researchers, Networks, and Prizewinning Science at Yale School of Medicine

Beatrix Hamburg, MD’48 (1923-2018)

DeWitt Wallace Distinguished Scholar at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University

A close headshot of Hamburg in sepia tone.

While an undergraduate at Vassar College, Beatrix “Betty” Hamburg met Eleanor Roosevelt, “another activist lady” whom she considered a key role model, alongside her mother, a social worker. In 1948, Hamburg became the first Black woman to graduate from Yale School of Medicine. Her experiences in medical school began a lifelong “crusade to help women to just hold their own, just to be an equal in the classroom.” Her work in child and adolescent psychiatry was similarly groundbreaking: an early advocate for the distinct psychological needs of children and adolescents, Hamburg’s work on peer counseling and support groups in the 1960s and 1970s went against conventional practice. Her work was recognized with numerous accolades, including membership in the National Academy of Medicine (1979).