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Important Women in Anesthesia

Gertie Marx
The “Mother of Obstetric Anesthesia.” 

Dr. Marx was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She studied medicine in Germany and Switzerland in the mid 1930s, before
emigrating to the United States. She trained at Beth Israel Medical Center, where she worked for 10 years as an attending anesthesiologist. She then went to Jacobi Medical Center and the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx, becoming the first Director of Obstetric Anesthesiology at those institutions. She continued to work at Jacobi and Einstein for over 40 years, rising to the rank of Professor. Gertie dedicated her life to the “care of mothers and their babies,” which she did through both her clinical care and her research. Dr. Marx held just as strong a commitment to the education of anesthesia residents and medical students,
training untold numbers of obstetric anesthesiologists. To these students of anesthesia, Dr. Marx was the model for pride, dedication and professionalism. During her illustrious career, she received many honors in the US, the UK and elsewhere. She was only
the second woman in the history of the ASA to receive the ASA Distinguished Service Award. The last of many awards that she
received in her life, was the Distinguished Service Award of the NYSSA.

Virginia Apgar
Inventor of the Apgar Score

Dr. Apgar was the first woman to head a specialty division at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center (now NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital) and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (P&S). In conjunction with Dr. Allen Whipple, she started P&S's anesthesia division. She was placed in charge of the division's administrative duties and was also tasked with coordinating the staffing of the division and its work throughout the hospital. Throughout much of the 1940s, she was an administrator, teacher, recruiter, coordinator and practicing physician. 
In 1949, Apgar became the first woman to become a full professor at P&S,[10] where she remained until 1959.[8] During this time, she also did clinical and research work at the affiliated Sloane Hospital for Women, still a division of NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital.[11] In 1953, she introduced the first test, called the Apgar score, to assess the health of newborn babies. 
Apgar continued to earn posthumous recognition for her contributions and achievements. In 1994, she was honored by the United States Postal Service with a Great Americans series postage stamp. In 1995, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. In 1999, she was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.

Sarah Joffe Glassman
​​NYSSA Past President and Past PGA General Chair

Practicing medicine in New York as Sarah Joffe, M.D., she was a pioneering anesthesiologist. As an original resident of Dr. E.A. Rovenstine, she helped establish the PostGraduate Assembly in Anesthesiology (PGA) in 1945. She served both as director of anesthesiology of Beth Israel Hospital and clinical professor of anesthesiology at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York for many years. A true leader in the profession, she became president of the New York State Society of Anesthesiologists in 1972. Then in 1974, she was elected general chair of the PGA and served three consecutive terms in that position. In 2002, Dr. Joffe was the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award of the NYSSA.