Biography: Dr. Florence Pat Haseltine

Dr. Florence Haseltine, biophysicist, reproductive endocrinologist, journal editor, novelist, inventor, and advocate for women's health, overcame severe dyslexia to build a rich and diverse career in medicine.

Florence Haseltine comes from a family of scientists. Her father was a physicist for the military, and each of her three siblings has become a distinguished scientist in various professional fields.

While growing up near the Naval Weapons Station in China Lake, California, Florence Haseltine dreamed of becoming an astronaut. She first attended college at the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied physics, then biophysics. She earned her Ph.D. in 1970 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she encountered gender bias, as she had when she attended the University of California at Berkeley. Her experience was not unlike that of many women in the 1960s who ventured into fields of study that had long been exclusive to men. When she later earned her M.D. degree in 1972 at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, she experienced a more supportive learning environment. It was there she discovered her joy for "the art of medicine."

As a resident in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Boston Hospital for Women, Dr. Haseltine decided to write a book about her personal and professional experiences. Teaming up with professional writer Yvonne Yaw, she collected countless hospital anecdotes and observations on audio tape. Yaw turned the experiences into a fictionalized documentary, and the result was Woman Doctor, a 1976 novel that reveals the level of gender bias against women in the medical profession during the 1960s and 1970s.

Dr. Haseltine went on to pursue clinical research on in vitro fertilization at Yale University School of Medicine, then behavioral research with couples receiving the treatment. In view of recent breakthroughs in cloning, she believes that more work in reproductive research will follow. Since 1985 she has been director of the Center for Population Research at the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health. The Center funds reproductive science on many levels, including basic research, contraception, behavioral research, family planning, and even population migration. In 1990, she formed the Society for the Advancement of Women's Health Research with other women who, like herself, were advocates for women's health through their work in federal programs or on academic campuses. Up to that time, women's health research had been generally overshadowed by research on male populations. She has expanded her efforts to correct the imbalance through many paths: She has been editor-in-chief of the Journal of Women's Health since 1992, and she edited the comprehensive report Women's Health Research: A Medical and Policy Primer published by the Society for the Advancement of Women's Health Research 1997.

Dr. Haseltine founded Haseltine Systems Corporation in 1995, a company that designs products for people with disabilities. She holds two patents for the Haseltine Flyer, a portable protective container for wheelchairs to be used on airplanes, to allow wheelchair users to travel more easily.

Through a competitive process of international nominations, the Kilby Awards Foundation aims to identify, celebrate, and provide heroic role models for future generations, leaders of the 21st century. Dr. Haseltine's work on behalf of women's health research merited her a Kilby Laureate Award in 1998, "for quietly changing the course of medical history through her dynamic influence on public policy and funding of medical research to include women in critical clinical trials, saving countless lives in the process."