Physician, Educator, Cancer Research Specialist

Jane Cooke Wright was born November 30, 1919 in New York City.  Her father, Dr. Louis Wright, was one of the first African American graduates of Harvard Medical School. After she graduated with honors from New York Medical college, interned at Bellevue Hospital and completed her residency at Harlem Hospital, she worked with her father, who had become the director of the Harlem Hospital Cancer Research Foundation. They did work which tested new chemicals on human leukemias and cancers of the lymphatic system, which resulted in some remission in patients. After her father died, she became the head of the Cancer Research Foundation. Three years later Dr. Jane Wright became an associate professor of surgical research at New York University and director of cancer and chemotherapy research at New York University Medical Center and its affiliated hospitals.  President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Dr. Wright to the President’s Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke. The work of the commission resulted in the establishment of a national network of treatment centers for the diseases.

While conducting private research at New York Medical College (where she now served as professor of surgery, head of the Cancer Chemotherapy Department and associate dean), Dr. Jane Wright created two curricula, one  which examined  stroke, heart disease and cancer and another which trained doctors in chemotherapy. She became the first female president of the New York Cancer Society in 1971 and retired in 1987 after a career that spanned four decades.

(Some info, my trusty Great African American Women book  by Darryl Lyman, image and other info – the National Library of Medicine)