Jessie Bierman

Jessie M. Bierman was born on April 6, 1900, at Egan Slough near Kalispell, Montana, to Henry and Alice Bierman. She received her bachelor of arts from the University of Montana in 1921 and got a medical degree from Rush Medical College of the University of Chicago in 1926. She earned a master of public health at the Institute of Columbia University fifteen years later.

Bierman worked in private practice in San Francisco, California, from 1927 to 1936 and also served as an instructor in pediatrics at the University of California School of Medicine. In 1936, Bierman returned to Montana to work as Director of Maternal and Child Health in the Montana Department of Health. She started well-baby clinics in Montana that were a model for such programs across the country. She was named professor emerita in 1963, but stayed on as the director of maternal and child health research until 1967. While at the University of California, Bierman traveled to Germany as an expert in maternal and child health and served as a consultant on maternal and child health problems in India. Bierman also studied the children of Kauai, Hawaii, and published her findings in the book The Children of Kauai.

Bierman was the recipient of an honorary doctorate by the University of Montana in 1967. Bierman's career was especially pioneering in advancing maternity and pediatric care in underprivileged communities with her studies that analyzed the roles that social factors, such as poverty, cultural, ethnic, and geographic factors, had on pregnancy, childbirth, and postnatal care on both the mother and the child. Bierman's career contributions to public health, especially toward mothers and children, played a crucial role in lowering the maternal death rates and infant mortality rates nationwide.

Bierman had a summer residence at Goose Bay on Flathead Lake. Bierman supported academics and research at The University of Montana’s Biological Station, endowing a distinguished professorship to support an internationally recognized ecologist to study and direct research at the Flathead Lake Biological Station. Jessie Bierman died on August 26, 1996, in Monterey County, California at the age of 96.