Dr Margaret Jane Pittman was a pioneering bacteriologist whose research at the National Institutes of Health on typhoid, cholera, and pertussis helped generate the development of vaccinations against these diseases as well as others.
13 Facts About Margaret Pittman
2.
Dr Pittman was the first female to lead a NIH laboratory, when in 1957, she was appointed chief of their Laboratory of Bacterial Products, a position she held until 1971.
3.
Margaret Pittman was born on January 20,1901, in Prairie Grove, Arkansas.
4.
Margaret Pittman's mother supplemented their income as a dressmaker and vendor of canned fruits and vegetables in order to support her children's education at Hendrix College.
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Margaret Pittman briefly held a teaching position at the Girl's Academy of Galloway College in Searcy, Arkansas, becoming principal of the Academy in her second year.
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Margaret Pittman was supported by a University of Chicago fellowship and a research fellowship from the Influenza Commission of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.
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In 1943, soon after the Division of Biologics Control had moved to the new Bethesda, Maryland, campus of the NIH, Margaret Pittman began work on a standard of potency for a pertussis vaccine.
8.
In collaboration with Dr Pearl Kindrick and Dr Grace Eldering of the Michigan Department of Health, who had pioneered an effective pertussis vaccine but who had been unable to develop a potency assay, Margaret Pittman guided the 1949 initiation of US standards for pertussis vaccine, which became the basis of the international potency requirement of the World Health Organization.
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Margaret Pittman served as a consultant to the World Health Organization in formulating the WHO requirement for cholera vaccine.
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Margaret Pittman participated in WHO comparative laboratory assays of typhoid vaccines and contributed to the development of revised US standards.
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Finally, with NIH colleagues, Margaret Pittman worked out standards for a single injection of tetanus toxoid in pregnant women to protect newborns who, in rural areas of New Guinea, were often delivered unaided and left for a period of time on the bare ground.
12.
Margaret Pittman received the EMD Millipore Alice C Evans Award from the American Society for Microbiology in 1990.
13.
Dr Margaret Pittman died on August 19,1995, in Cheverly, Maryland and is buried in Prairie Grove, Arkansas.