Four Athenas – Europe's first female neurosurgeons

Abstract

In the early 20th century, a tumultuous era was yielding geopolitical and social change. Europe at large was undergoing redefinition of borders, political structures, and economies, while rebuilding societies after World War I. At the same time, neurosurgery was emerging as a new specialty, and women were allowed to study medicine for the first time in many European countries. These factors created a synergy, setting the stage for Europe's four first female neurosurgeons to emerge. In 1924, Germany's Alice Rosenstein began her neurosurgical career and contributed to the refinement of pneumoencephalography. Due to her Jewish background, she was forced to flee Europe, emigrating to the United States, where she did not continue to practice neurosurgery. In 1929, Russia's Serafima Bryusova began her neurosurgical training. She studied intracranial pressure in trephined patients and wrote the first Russian monograph on cerebral angiography before she was immobilized by severe arthritis. England's Diana Beck began her neurosurgical career in 1939. She contributed to the surgical treatment of intracerebral hemorrhage and researched idiopathic intracranial hypertension, even though many believed she could not be a successful surgeon due to her myasthenia gravis. In 1943, Romania's Sofia Ionescu started a prolific academic neurosurgical career. She developed a minimally-invasive technique to treat intracerebral hematomas and worked tirelessly to bring neurosurgery to all corners of her country. Europe's first women in neurosurgery were marked by war and adversity. Their stories carry within them a spirit of resilience, fortitude, and tenacity that continues to characterize women in neurosurgery today.

Judith Balkányi-Lepintre (1912–1982): first woman neurosurgeon, first woman war neurosurgeon, and first woman pediatric neurosurgeon in France

“…Although Judith Balkányi-Lepintre was among the first very few women neurosurgeons in the world, she was not mentioned in a very recent publication about Europe's first four female neurosurgeons of the 1920s through the 1950s. 6 In that paper, the authors listed Alice Rosenstein from Breslau, Germany, who completed her training under Otfrid Foerster in 1929; Serafima Bryusova from Moscow, Russia, who trained with Nikolay Burdenko in the 1920s and 1930s at the then recently established Burdenko Institute; Diana Beck, who in 1939 took an apprenticeship with Sir Hugh Cairns in Oxford, United Kingdom, and whose first appointment as consultant was delayed by the war until she could take a post as consultant neurosurgeon at the Middlesex Hospital in London in 1947; 13 and Sofia Ionescu from Romania who graduated as a neurosurgeon in 1954. 14 In another equally recent paper by authors from "a global working group of women involved in neurosurgery in different countries," 1 Judith was briefly mentioned as follows:…”

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Recently, there has been an interest in unearthing and exploring the missing historical figures among pioneering women in the neurosurgical field, and many papers have been dedicated to this issue. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Unfortunately, one major figure has remained unrecognized: Judith Balkányi-Lepintre, a Hungarian-French neurosurgeon, who was not only the first woman neurosurgeon in France but also the first woman war neurosurgeon for the French Army and eventually the first woman pediatric neurosurgeon in France. This vignette provides an account of her neurosurgical career.

Judith's TrajectoryJudith Balkányi (Fig.

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Women in Neurosurgery: Historical Path to Self-Segregation and Proposal for an Integrated Future

“…Female entry to neurosurgery is not clearly historically dated. In the 1920′s, in Eastern Europe, neurosurgical procedures were allegedly performed by female surgeons, namely Anna Bormane, Serafima Semyonovna Bryusova and Alice Rosenstein ( 11 , 12 ). In 1943, in the United Kingdom, Diana Beck was appointed consultant neurosurgeon at the Royal Free Hospital in London, thus becoming the first formally certified female neurosurgeon; although this record is often attributed to the Romanian Sofia Ionescu, she did not qualify from medical school until 1945 ( 13 , 14 ).…”