Marilyn Ramenofsky

Marilyn Ramenofsky (born August 20, 1946) is an American former competition swimmer, Olympic medalist, and former world record-holder in the 400-meter swim.

Personal Ramenofsky was born one of four children on August 20, 1946, in Phoenix, Arizona, to Elizabeth Lantin Ramenofsky and Dr. Abraham Isadore Ramenofsky, who would act as team physician and travel with the American Swim team to the Maccabiah Games in Israel in September 1961. Marilyn's mother Elizabeth was born in Globe, Arizona, and married Abraham Ramenofsky on June 7, 1936, in Los Angeles.

Both of Marilyn's parents were graduates of the University of Illinois, where her mother Elizabeth graduated in 1930. Dr. Ramenofsky attended Medical School there, interned in Chicago, and began his practice in LaSalle in 1932 where he had been born. After Dr. Ramenofsky completed Air Force Service in WWII, the family moved to Phoenix, Arizona in the 1940s where Elizabeth had family and ancestry.

Swimming career Coaches Marilyn swam with Phoenix's well-known Dick Smith Swim School during her early swimming career. Smith, an inductee of the Swimming Hall of Fame, served as the Olympic Coach for the Women's Diving Team in 1964. Later, she swam for the Arizona Desert Rats, an exceptional AAU Swim team that was coached by Nancy Schlueter and her husband Walt. The Schlueters would both coach Arizona collegiate swimming, and train Olympians in their careers. Marilyn noted in interviews that "her rapid rise to the international spotlight was largely due to her training...with legendary swim coach Walter Schlueter", and that "suddenly my times were dropping and I was shooting to beat the people on top."

1964 Olympic trial 400 meter world record Ramenofsky set new world-record times for the 400-meter freestyle three times in 1964, including once at the U.S. Olympic Trials, reducing the record to 4:39.5 on August 31 in New York. She had just turned 18. Though Marilyn had already broken the former world record, her best time at the Astoria Pool in the finals of the Olympic Trials in August 1964 sliced five seconds off the former World Record of 4:45.5 set in 1960. She also set a new U.S. record in the 220-yard freestyle in 1964, at 2:17.3.

Marilyn had been the clear favorite to win the 400, as her Olympic Trial time would have taken the gold. Duenkel's winning Olympic time for the gold of 4:43:3, was nearly four seconds behind Marilyn's World Record time of 4:39.5, set two months earlier at the finals of the Olympic trials in New York on August 31.

Maccabiah Games At the 1961 Maccabiah Games she won a gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle relay and a bronze in the 400-meter freestyle. At the 1965 Maccabiah Games she won gold medals in both the 200-meter and 400-meter freestyles. and competing in the Tokyo Olympics, she attended Pomona College in Claremont, California, and trained with the Pomona College men's swim team because the college had no women's team. She focused on more than swimming at Pomona, and wrote a thesis on algae structures that became the start of a career in zoology and academia.

Coaching swimming Marilyn was later involved in coaching for numerous teams at the high school and college level, even helping to lead the University of Texas to the state championships in 1971 while she was completing her master's degree in Austin. She married Dr. John C. Wingfield at South Mountain Park outside Phoenix, Arizona, in November 1979. Wingfield was a Zoologist and neurobiologist who had completed a Doctorate from the University College of North Wales in 1973. Like Marilyn, he would later perform research at the University of California, Davis, and collaborate with her on some of her research. Wingfield's research at UC Davis focused on neural pathways for environmental signals relating to seasonality, mechanisms of coping with environmental stress (allostasis), and the social modulation of hormone secretion. His work has had parallels with Marilyn's own research.

Academic career Ramenofsky received her bachelor's degree in 1969 in Botany and Biology from Pomona College, then completed her Masters of Science in 1972 in Zoology from the University of Texas at Austin. Her Doctorate in Zoology, completed in 1982, was received from the University of Washington. She began her academic career serving as a professor at Vassar College for three years, then taught for twenty years at the University of Washington until 2008, when she began teaching and research at the University of California, Davis. Much of her research has focused on how glucocorticoids (steroid hormones) may orchestrate the suite of life history changes associated with bird migration.

Continuing at UC Davis since 2008, she has most recently studied the migration of birds, and changes in their muscle physiology during stages of migration.