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Anita Bahn

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Anita Bahn
Born
Anita Kaplan

1919/1920
DiedJuly 19, 1980 (aged 60)[1]
EducationHunter College
Johns Hopkins University
Alma materMedical College of Pennsylvania
Spouse(s)Ralph Bahn (his death)
Milton A. Rothman (m. 1980; her death)
Children2
Scientific career
FieldsEpidemiology
Biostatistics
InstitutionsPerelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania
Thesis A Methodological Study of the Outpatient Psychiatric Clinic Population of Maryland, 1948-59  (1960)
Doctoral advisorJerome Cornfield

Anita Kaplan Bahn (1919/1920 – July 19, 1980) was an American epidemiologist, biostatistician, and cancer researcher.[1][2]

Education and career

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Bahn was originally from New York City.[1] She left high school at the age of 15, and earned a bachelor's degree in biology four years later from Hunter College, together with a certification allowing her to teach high school biology. She would also go on to study "physics at New York City College; botany and bacteriology at Cornell University; mathematics and statistics at American University and at George Washington University", but without completing those programs to a graduate degree.[2]

She became head of outpatient studies at the National Institute of Mental Health from 1951 to 1966.[1][2] During this time, she earned a Sc.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1960. Her dissertation, supervised by Jerome Cornfield, was A Methodological Study of the Outpatient Psychiatric Clinic Population of Maryland, 1948-59.[3] She then returned to academia as an associate professor of biostatistics at the Medical College of Pennsylvania. While there, she worked towards an M.D., which she earned in 1972.[1][2]

She became chief epidemiologist of Maryland for the following two years,[1][2] and then became a professor of community medicine and epidemiology at the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.[1] At Pennsylvania, she helped found a graduate program in epidemiology, and led a research center on the epidemiology of cancer. She was also affiliated with the Fox Chase Cancer Center and held an adjunct position at Temple University.[2]

In 1980, she was recruited to head a new epidemiology program in the Graduate School of Public Health at San Diego State University,[4] but she died at age 60 of a cerebral hemorrhage at the University of Pennsylvania hospital before she could take up her new position.[2][1]

Books

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Bahn authored Basic Medical Statistics (Grune & Stratton, 1972).[5] and, with Judith S. Mausner, she co-wrote Epidemiology: An Introductory Text (Saunders, 1974).[6]

Awards and honors

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Bahn was named a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1970.[7] She was also a fellow of the American Public Health Association and the American College of Preventive Medicine.[2]

Personal

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Her husband, Ralph Bahn, with whom she had two children, died in the early 1970s;[1] she married again, in 1980, the year of her death, to nuclear physicist and science fiction fan Milton A. Rothman.[1][2]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Dr. Anita Bahn, Former Md. Epidemiologist", The Washington Post, July 23, 1980
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Anita K. Bahn, Distinguished Epidemiologist 1920–1980", Association News, American Journal of Public Health, 70 (12): 1311–1312, December 1, 1980, doi:10.2105/AJPH.70.12.1310
  3. ^ Anita Bahn at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. ^ History, San Diego State University Graduate School of Public Health, retrieved 2017-11-01
  5. ^ Reviews of Basic Medical Statistics: Thomas G. Mitchell (1973), Journal of Nuclear Medicine 14: 718, [1]; William R. Best (1974), Archives of Internal Medicine 133 (5): 874, doi:10.1001/archinte.1974.00320170150026.
  6. ^ Reviews of Epidemiology: An Introductory Text: Carol J. Hogue (April 1975), American Journal of Public Health 65 (4): 415, doi:10.2105/AJPH.65.4.415-a; Thomas Mack (September 1975), JAMA 233 (9): 1006–1007, doi:10.1001/jama.1975.03260090072035; Jeremiah Stamler (May 1976), Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 29 (5): 342, doi:10.1016/0021-9681(76)90096-5; J. S. McCormick (1976), British Journal of General Practice 26 (164): 210, [2].
  7. ^ ASA Fellows list, American Statistical Association, archived from the original on 2017-12-01, retrieved 2017-11-01