A History Worth Preserving: Mary-Claire King, PhD
Turning Dr. King’s legacy into a resource for all
As medical professionals, we know that once knowledge is gained — through close study, collaboration, determination, testing, and retesting — it must be shared.
At the Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation, we believe the same principle applies to women’s histories. Their lived experiences, writings, lectures, passion projects, and interviews hold as much potential to guide and inspire the next generation of doctors and scholars as their professional achievements — and therefore should be safeguarded alongside their work.
That’s why we created the HUB — a centralized, accessible knowledge base to archive the incredible lives and contributions of women in medicine. Promoting visibility and discoverability, the HUB catalogs and digitizes autobiographical, biographical, and professional materials from distinguished women in the medical and healthcare fields.
One such woman profiled on the HUB is Mary-Claire King, PhD, world-renowned geneticist and 2015 Alma Dea Morani Award recipient.
With over a dozen nationally recognized awards to her name and nearly 50 years’ experience in higher education, Dr. King is revered as a trailblazing force in the field of genetics. She was the first scientist to show that breast cancer is inherited by a gene mutation called BRCA1, and later used her expertise in DNA sequencing to aid in several human rights investigations aimed at reuniting abduction victims with their families. Her work on pinpointing the genetic bases for genetic disorders in children, schizophrenia, and human evolution also notably found that humans and chimpanzees are 99% identical in their protein-coding sequences.
One of the first developed for the platform, Dr. King’s HUB profile offers a comprehensive overview of her education, career, and professional accomplishments. She graduated from the University of California, Berkley with her PhD in genetics in 1973 before moving across the Bay Bridge to UC San Francisco for a fellowship in cancer epidemiology and genetics. Dr. King then went on to teach at UC Berkley and the University of Washington while sitting on four different professional and advocacy boards, including a term as President of the American Society of Human Genetics.
Aside from detailing her professional milestones, Dr. King’s HUB profile also serves as an extensive record of her media presence throughout her career. Users can explore a collection of over 40 interviews, journal articles, newspaper articles, encyclopedia entries, videos, online exhibits, magazine features, and even congressional testimony that discuss Dr. King’s work, or was written by Dr. King herself.
Dr. King’s HUB profile documents peer mentions as well, giving users a chance to view her accomplishments through the lens of her contemporaries. Magazine articles, alumni publications, award dedications, and even two films — a documentary and a feature — offer insight into Dr. King’s influence from the perspective of others in the medical community.
HUB profiles like Dr. King’s exemplify how vital record-keeping is to the Foundation’s mission. We will continue to work diligently to collect materials and build a free, digitized knowledge base on those who lead the field and advance medicine for the benefit of all. As the HUB grows, it will become a first-of-its-kind archival tool to preserve and share the legacies of outstanding women in medicine.