Rose Frisch

Rose Epstein Frisch
Born (1918-07-07)July 7, 1918
Bronx, New York City, United States
Died January 30, 2015(2015-01-30) (aged 96)
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Residence Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Citizenship United States
Nationality American
Fields Women's health, women's biology, leptin, obesity, fat, infertility, public health, population health, biology
Institutions

Manhattan Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory,

Los Alamos, NM; Harvard School of Public Health
Known for discovery of leptin; work in infertility, specifically her discovery that low body fat was a contributing factor to infertility
Notable awards

Guggenheim Fellowship – 1975–1976[1]
Sigma Xi national lecturer – 1988–1990[2] Fellow of the Bunting Institute – 1993–1994[2]
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences[2]
Rally Day Medal for Medical Research and Reproductive Health (awarded by Smith College)[2]

Professor Emeritus Award of Merit, Harvard School of Public Health[2]
Spouse David H. Frisch, PhD, an American physicist who helped develop the atom bomb in World War II and later became active in the disarmament movement.[3]
Children a daughter, Ruth Frisch Dealy, an artist in Providence, Rhode Island; a son, Henry Jonathan Frisch, a professor of physics at the University of Chicago; and four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren
Website
www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/in-memoriam-rose-epstein-frisch-expert-in-womens-fertility-2/

Rose Epstein Frisch (7 July 1918 – 30 January 2015) was an American biologist whose work was instrumental in the discovery of leptin.[4] She is mainly known for her work in infertility; specifically the discovery that low body fat was a contributing factor to infertility.[5]

Early life and education

She was born Rose Epstein in 1918, in the Bronx, to Russian immigrants Louis and Stella Epstein. Frisch attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in 1939. She earned her master's degree in zoology the following year at Columbia University, and her Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Wisconsin in 1943.[2]

Research

Focusing on the role of adipose tissue (fat) in fertility, Frisch discovered that low body fat (under 17%) could cause infertility, late menarche, and oligomenorrhea. She also discovered that athletes were at lower risk of breast cancer.[5]

Frisch began her research career as a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin, where she worked with Drosophila melanogaster. After her doctorate, she became a human computer for the Manhattan Project.[5]

Until she passed, she was involved with the Cambridge-based Center for Population and Development Studies of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.[6]

Legacy

Frisch was widely respected by athletic women, who were often able to achieve a pregnancy in part by applying knowledge gathered from her research.[5]

Honors and awards

Selected publications

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "1975 Fellows". Guggenheim Foundation.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "Rose E. Frisch". Harvard University. 2015.
  3. ↑ Weisskopf, Victor; Low, Francis; Osborne, Louis (July 1992). "Obituary: David H. Frisch". Physics Today. 45 (7): 80–81. Bibcode:1992PhT....45g..80W. doi:10.1063/1.2809748.
  4. ↑ Female Fertility and the Body Fat Connection, book for the non-scientist describing her detective work leading to the discovery of leptin
  5. 1 2 3 4 Belluck, Pam (11 February 2015). "Rose E. Frisch, Scientist Who Linked Body Fat to Fertility, Dies at 96". New York Times.
  6. ↑ Small, K. R., Rose Frisch, 1918-2015, posted February 12, 2015, accessed February 18, 2015
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