Dr. Sarah Stewart

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.

She worked at the NIH while also completing her Ph.D., but her request to study the link between viruses and cancer was denied. She left the NIH in 1944 to teach at Georgetown University in the medical school.

She returned to the NIH in 1951 to work at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Stewart was the Head of the Human Virus Studies Section in the Laboratory of Viral Oncology at the NCI.

In 1956 she isolated the SE (Stewart-Eddy) polyoma virus with Dr. Bernice Eddy of the Division of Biologics Controls (DBS) Laboratory of Virology & Rickettsiology. The 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.

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, 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.

Bibliography: 

Baker, Carl G. An Administrative History of the National Cancer Institute’s Viruses and

Cancer Programs, 1950-1972. On file at Office of NIH History & Stetten Museum, Bethesda, MD, n.d.

 Georgetown University School of Medicine. “Biography of Sarah Elizabeth Stewart, MD,

PhD.” Accessed September 21, 2021.https://som.georgetown.edu/stewartsocietybio/.

McNeill, Leila.  “The Woman Who Revealed the Missing Link Between Viruses and Cancer.”

Smithsonian Magazine. June 17, 2019. Accessed September 21, 2021.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/woman-who-revealed-missing-link-between-viruses-and-cancer-180972427/.

Peterson, Faye. “Dr. Eddy, Eminent Virologist Finds Challenge of Research Rewarding.” The

NIH Record, Volume XX, Issue No. 4. February 20, 1968. Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health, 1968. Accessed September 21, 2021. https://nihrecord.nih.gov/sites/recordNIH/files/pdf/1968/NIH-Record-1968-02-20.pdf.