Martha Tracy

Martha Tracy (April 10, 1876 – March 22, 1942) served as dean of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP) from 1917 to 1940, leading the institution through the Great Depression. She created a department of preventive medicine within the college and was the first professor of preventive medicine at WMC. In 1940, she joined the City of Philadelphia as assistant director of Health.

Early life and education Martha Tracy was the youngest of nine children of first cousins Martha Sherman (Greene) Tracy and Jeremiah Evarts Tracy. She was the cousin of Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania alumna Dr. Elizabeth Follansbee, the niece of Senator William Maxwell Evarts, the granddaughter of Jeremiah Evarts and the great-great-granddaughter of founding father Roger Sherman. She studied at Bryn Mawr College from 1894 to 1898, where she was captain of the basketball team for three years and president of the College Athletic Association for one year, while earning her Bachelor of Arts degree. She graduated in 1904 as a medical doctor.

Academic career In 1907, Tracy became an associate professor of chemistry at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, working under Dr. Henry Leffman. She also continued to do laboratory research independently with support from the Huntingdon Fund for Cancer Research. In 1908, she became the first woman member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), which had been founded a year earlier.

From 1911 to 1913 Tracy spent a year on leave of absence from WMC, studying Physiological Chemistry at Yale University. She returned to Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1913 to rank as a full professor of physiological chemistry in the department of Physiological Chemistry. succeeding Clara Marshall. She served in this position until 1940.