Rita Sapiro Finkler

Rita Sapiro Finkler (born Ricka Sapiro; November 1, 1888 – November 8, 1968) was a Russian-born American physician. She practiced pediatrics and gynecology in her early career, but is best known for her work as an endocrinologist. She established and directed the department of endocrinology at Newark Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey.

Early life Ricka Sapiro was born in 1888 in Kherson, Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire to Sarah and Woolf Sapiro, a miller. Her mother, who came from a Jewish family, died from breast cancer when Ricka was young. She had two sisters, Saphira and Rhia, and a brother who died as a child. She attended Byra Bestow-Gersky College and enrolled at Saint Petersburg State University to study law when she was sixteen years old. She left the university after two years with the intention of moving to New Zealand. She made a stopover in the United States, where she passed through Pennsylvania to visit a relative who had graduated from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. Her relative persuaded her to remain in the US and attend the Woman's Medical College herself. While studying, she met Samuel J. Finkler; they married in 1913 and Sapiro graduated in 1915. Rita and Samuel Finkler had a daughter, Sylvia (born in 1921), and divorced in 1925. After stepping down as the head of Newark Beth Israel's endocrinology department, Finkler served as a chief emeritus and consultant endocrinologist.