A Female Science and Tech Pioneer about whose Breakthrough Discovery You May Not Have been Taught in High School: Dr Nancy Kemeny

A shout out to our pioneers who are women in the sciences and medicine — whose breakthroughs, history shows, are often under-recognized in medical or scientific history.

Dr. Nancy Kemeny of Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital is responsible for groundbreaking research.

 

She came to this country as a child without speaking English, learned a new language, and then graduated from UMDNJ New Jersey Medical School, Newark, in 1971 — far ahead of when it was easy for a woman to do such a thing without facing prejudice, trivialization and other barriers. She went on to become a luminary in her field. Dr Kemeny is an oncologist and has engineered huge breakthroughs in the treatment of metastatic cancer of the colon, among other achievements. This  peer-reviewed and important paper reveals why her career has been one of triumph. Read it if anyone you love is facing this difficult disease. It reveals that Dr Kemeny has pioneered a treatment for this cancer, involving sectioning of the liver, which was not standard part of conventional treatment. Dr Kemeny secured amazing results after developing this daring treatment option;  substantial numbers of her patients were living ten years or more. She and her colleagues achieved these outcomes with a disease that had been considered often much more quickly devastating.

 

Here is to the female pioneers in STEM, and in medicine in particular, who have not yet entered the mass consciousness as science’s pioneers, though many male peers have done so. And kudos to Dr. Kemeny, who tried and succeeded at something remarkable, starting her career at a time when women were being told that they were not well fitted for the surgery or the lab;  many of her patients have been granted years more both of life and of quality of life, with her, and her colleagues,’ innovative discovery and treatment.