28 Facts About Betty Hay

Elizabeth Dexter "Betty" Hay was an American cell and developmental biologist.

Betty Hay was best known for her research in limb regeneration, the role of the extracellular matrix in cell differentiation, and epithelial-mesenchymal transitions.

Betty Hay primarily worked with amphibians during her years of limb regeneration work and then moved onto avian epithelia for research on the ECM and EMT.

Betty Hay was thrilled by the introduction of transmission electron microscopy during her lifetime, which aided her in many of her findings throughout her career.

Betty Hay was born in Melbourne, Florida, on April 2,1927, to Isaac and Lucille Elizabeth Hay.

Betty Hay lived with her parents, twin brother, and sister.

Betty Hay worked with Rose during the summers at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.

Betty Hay then went on to receive an MD degree from Johns Hopkins in 1952 and was one of only four women in the graduating class.

In 1953, on short year after graduating from Johns Hopkins, Betty Hay joined the Hopkins Anatomy Department faculty and continued her work on amphibian regeneration and embryological processes.

Betty Hay then accepted the Louise Foote Pfeiffer Professorship of Embryology in 1969.

Betty Hay continued to succeed and was elected chairperson of Harvard's department of anatomy and cellular biology in 1975.

Betty Hay retired from the cell biology department of Harvard Medical School in 2005.

Betty Hay is best known for her research in limb regeneration, the process of epithelial-mesenchymal transitions during development, and the role of the extracellular matrix in cell differentiation.

Betty Hay was able to show the stages of myofibril loss by differentiated muscle cells using TEM.

Betty Hay confirmed that the limb tissues gave rise to undifferentiated blastema cells.

Therefore, Betty Hay specifically labeled the blood and exhibited that the osteoclasts came from the blood cells.

In 1965, Betty Hay met Jim Dobson, who was a scientist that was very good at culturing and growing up epithelium.

Betty Hay needed his help in order to prove that the epidermis produced collagen, which was an idea that she and Jean-Paul Revel originally postulated.

In 1972, Jonathan Bard came to spend a postdoctoral year in the Betty Hay lab, working on two projects.

Betty Hay worked with Hay using TEM to prove that EMT removed the palatal seam that forms when the opposite shelves fuse.

Betty Hay believed that knowledge of the ECM was essential in order to understand other subjects including the cytoskeleton, cell migration, cell shape, and the control of cell growth and differentiation.

Betty Hay asserted that the basis of many scientific ideas originate from the full understanding the ECM's composition, relationship to the cell surface, and role in development.

Betty Hay was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1984.

Elizabeth D Hay Professorship was established at Harvard Medical School in 2014.

Betty Hay's immense dedicated and passion in her research caused her to always put her research career before her personal life.

Betty Hay was always more focused on her work than her relationships.

Betty Hay dated many men throughout her life, but she claimed that the men of her time were "merely looking for home-makers".

Betty Hay died of lung cancer on August 20,2007, in hospice in Wayland, Massachusetts.