A tribute to Elizabeth D. Hay, 1927-2007.

Dr. Elizabeth Dexter Hay, born in St. Augustine, Florida, on April 2, 1927, died of cancer on August 20, 2007. Betty left behind a rich legacy, not only as a superb cell and developmental biologist, but also as an educator and beloved mentor. She was a remarkable woman. Betty attended Smith College in 1944, and met biology professor Meryl Rose, who became her scientific mentor. In Rose’s laboratory, Betty studied limb regeneration, and became so immersed in the work, that she completed substantial research while handling her college course load. Also, each summer she worked in Rose’s lab in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. She graduated summa cum laude from Smith College in 1948 and thought of going to graduate school. Rose talked her into applying to medical school instead, because he understood that her career choices might be restricted to teaching in a women’s college biology department if she had only a Ph.D. degree. Therefore, Betty applied to Johns Hopkins University Medical School and was accepted. (She considered applying to Harvard Medical School, but decided against it when she found they had no women’s rest rooms.) While in her first year of medical school, her interest in regeneration, anatomy, and histology caught the eye of the department chair, Dr. Allan Grafflin, who found Betty a spot in a lab to pursue her regeneration studies. She also continued to go to Woods Hole each summer to do further work with Rose. In 1952, she was awarded her MD degree, being only one of four women in the class. She stayed on at Johns Hopkins for a year of internship, then, in 1953, was appointed as an instructor of Anatomy. The next year, she attended a meeting where Keith Porter showed electron micrographs of cytoplasmic structures. This caught her attention. Betty’s words were, “I came back and, wow, from then on it was electron microscopy for me” (taken from Int J Dev Biol 2004;48:687-694, article entitled “The extracellular matrix in development and regeneration: an interview with Elizabeth D. Hay” by Robert L Trelstad). She located the only electron microscope at Johns Hopkins in the School of Public Health, and began using it. By 1956, Betty was appointed Fig. 1. Images of Elizabeth (Betty) Hay from her medical student days using the TEM at John’s Hopkins University Medical School (upper left, from the Harvard Archives); as an Assistant Professor (upper center, photo from Jean Paul Revel); in her office as the Chair and Professor of the Department of Anatomy and Cellular Biology at Harvard (lower left, photo from Jean Paul Revel); the night she accepted the E.B. Wilson Medal from the American Society for Cell Biology in 1988 (lower center and right color photos by Mark Nathanson).