Dr Sarah Stewart - Infinite Women

Born: 16 August 1905, Mexico
Died: 27 November 1976
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA

The following bio was written by Emma Rosen, author of On This Day She Made History: 366 Days With Women Who Shaped the World and This Day In Human Ingenuity & Discovery: 366 Days of Scientific Milestones with Women in the Spotlight, and has been republished with permission.

Sarah Stewart was a Mexican-American researcher renowned for her pioneering work in viral oncology research. She was the first to demonstrate the transmission of cancer-causing viruses from one animal to another.
Sarah Elizabeth Stewart was born in Tecalitlán, Jalisco, Mexico, to a Native Mexican mother and an American mining engineer father. The Mexican Revolution in 1911 forced her family to migrate to the United States.
In 1927, she earned a B.Sc. degree in economics from New Mexico State University. She continued her education with a master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1930 and a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Chicago in 1939. Stewart worked as a bacteriology professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine and became the first woman to receive an MD Degree from Georgetown University School of Medicine in 1949.
During her time at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 1935 to 1944, she published seven papers on anaerobic bacteria while working on developing a gangrene vaccine during World War II. Stewart later joined the National Cancer Institute in 1951 to explore the link between viruses and cancer.
As a woman in the medical field in the 1940s and 1950s, Stewart faced challenges, including being initially denied the opportunity to work on cancer research at NIH. Despite these obstacles, she persevered and made significant contributions to cancer and virus research.
In 1953, Stewart discovered the polyomavirus, and her collaboration with Bernice Eddy led to the groundbreaking finding that the virus could cause cancer to spread from one animal to another. This discovery transformed the field of viral oncology and earned them recognition in Time magazine in 1959.
Throughout her life, Stewart also identified other viruses associated with cancers, influenced by Jonas Salk’s work on the polio virus vaccine.

The following is republished from the National Institutes of Health. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).

Sarah Stewart was born in Mexico to an American father and Mexican mother. She moved with her family back to the United States at age 5. She graduated from New Mexico State University in 1927.

Stewart earned her MS in Microbiology from University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 1930 and her Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Chicago in 1939. She later became the first woman to receive an M.D. from Georgetown University in 1949 (at the age of 43).

She worked at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) while also completing her Ph.D., but her request to study the link between viruses and cancer was denied. The National Cancer Institute at the NIH cited a lack of education and experience with human research as the reason for their refusal to fund her. Until the 1960s, most scientists considered the idea of a cancer-causing virus to be preposterous. She left the NIH in 1944 to teach at Georgetown University in the medical school. While teaching, she was able to take medical courses until she was able to officially enroll in medical school when Georgetown began accepting women in 1947.

The NIH continued to deny Dr. Stewart’s funding to study cancer, so she took a temporary position in gynecology at a hospital in Staten Island to gain more experience. Finally, after an appointment in the United States Public Health Service (PHS) Commissioned Corps and a position at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Baltimore, the NIH accepted her request to study cancer. She returned to the NIH in 1951 to work at their NCI. Dr. Stewart was the Head of the Human Virus Studies Section in the Laboratory of Viral Oncology at the NCI at the NIH.

In 1956 she isolated the SE (Stewart-Eddy) polyoma virus with Dr. Bernice Eddy of the Division of Biologics Standards (DBS) Laboratory of Virology & Rickettsiology. The SE polyoma virus induces parotid gland tumors and a variety of other primary neoplasms in mice and other animals, which had implications for future viral oncology research. . Without Drs. Stewart and Eddy’s persistence on the ability of viruses to cause cancer, the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine would not exist today.

Twice Drs. Stewart and Eddy were nominated for the Nobel Prize for their work on the S-E polyoma virus, but unfortunately, they never won.

Dr. Stewart won several awards during her career, including the Federal Woman’s Award presented by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965.

She retired from the NIH in 1970 and unfortunately died of cancer in 1976.