Scoring the First Goal

Abstract

It cannot have escaped Dorothy Andersen's notice that Martha Wollstein, now recognized as one of the founders of pediatric pathology [1], faded quickly from view:Her colleagues seldom got to know her as a person. Many considered her difficult to work with; few bothered to pierce the protective shell of this intellectually gifted, shy, and lonely woman. Following her retirement in 1935, she moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan. She returned to New York in 1939 to enter the Mount Sinai Hospital as a patient and died there that September. She was buried in Beth-El Cemetery, Brooklyn. Her death, like her life, was hardly noticed. A handful of colleagues attended her funeral, and obituary notices were brief --at best a paltry witness to the achievement of this distinguished pioneer in pediatric pathology. [2]