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In Memoriam
Dr.
Helen Abbey, Professor of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School
of Public Health for over 50 years and one of the School’s most
beloved
faculty members, died March 4, 2001.
With appointments in the School of Public Health’s
Departments of
Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Population and Family Health
Sciences,
and in the Departments of Medicine and Ophthalmology at the Hopkins
School
of Medicine, Dr. Abbey’s influence on generations of scientists is
pervasive. Her
research focused on the design and statistical analysis of
epidemiologic
and genetic studies of human disease.
She investigated the effects of low-level radiation on
morbidity
and mortality, and the natural history of enteric infections in the
American Indian population.
As late as 1998, she was co-authoring scientific papers that
appeared in peer-reviewed journals. Born
September 1, 1915, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Helen Abbey received an
MA
degree in mathematics at the University of Michigan in 1942.
After working several years as a statistician for the
Michigan
Department of Health, she joined the faculty at the Johns Hopkins
School
of Public Health in 1946 as a research assistant in Biostatistics.
At
that time, the School consisted of a single building on Wolfe
Street.
Reminiscing later, Dr. Abbey wrote, “The [Wolfe Street
building’s] doors were locked at 10:00 p.m. but most people seemed
to
have keys. These
were needed because students came in nights and Sundays to feed
their
animals or check up on their experiments. It was rumored that I came
in to
feed my calculator.” Dr.
Abbey earned her Doctorate of Science degree in Biostatistics in
1951 at
the School, where she had unparalleled role models in teaching --
Dr.
Lowell
Reed,
who became the seventh president of
Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. Margaret
Merrell,
a distinguished professor of Biostatistics.
Dr. Abbey matured into the quintessential teacher and mentor.
During her tenure at the School, Dr. Abbey instructed over 4,000
students
in Biostatistics and was an advisor and thesis reader to over 700
doctoral
candidates. Among
her students were ministers of health, directors of hospitals,
university
professors and health experts throughout industry and
government.
She taught two Lasker Award winners, Dr. Victor McKusick,
Professor
of Medical Genetics at Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. Alfred
Sommer,
Dean of the School of Hygiene and Public Health at Johns Hopkins.
Dr.
Abbey had taught the School of Public Health’s current dean, Dr.
Alfred
Sommer, when he was earning his Masters of Health Sciences degree in
the
1970s, and she was never afraid thereafter to treat him as a former
pupil.
Of Dr. Abbey, Dean Sommer said, “She was the quintessential
teacher and mentor -- I knew this first hand, as her student in the
early
70s.
And
I felt this keenly when she accompanied me to Beijing in 1983 to
co-teach
a course on epidemiology and statistics to their leading academic
ophthalmologists: She gravitated to the students, they flocked to
her, and
she insisted on informing every visiting dignitary that ‘the Dean
was my
student.’ I was, and am, better for it.” Because
of this enduring concern for students, an endowed fund was created
in Dr.
Abbey’s honor at the Hopkins School of Public Health.
The
Helen Abbey Fund provides support for doctoral candidates in
Biostatistics who have made a commitment to teaching and who serve
as
teaching assistants in introductory classes, thereby continuing Dr.
Abbey's legacy. Dr.
Abbey was a member of the American Statistical Association, the
Population
Association of America, the American Society of Human Genetics, and
the
American Public Health Association.
In 1971 she was the recipient of the School’s first ever “Golden
Apple Award” for excellence in teaching, an award she went on
to win twice more.
In 1982 the School’s Alumni Association presented her with
the
Heritage Award and in 1985 she won both the Ernest Lyman
Stebbins Award
and the American Public Health Association Award. The School named
Dr.
Abbey one of its Heroes of Public Health in 1991. On
Tuesday, April
10, 2001, the
School of Public Health held a memorial service. Donations
in Dr. Abbey's memory may be made to the Helen Abbey Fund, c/o the
Department of
External Affairs, Room W1600, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health, 615
N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21205 USA.
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