Women in Science and Engineering at Yale (2020 Edition)

Florence Barbara Seibert (1897–1991), Ph.D.

Florence Seibert was a biochemist. She received her Ph.D. in Physiological Chemistry at Yale in 1923. She held a Van Meter Fellowship 1921–1922. She discovered bacterial contamination in the distillation process of preparing injections used for arthritis and other diseases. She had a tremendous impact on the safety of intravenous feeding by developing a method to distill the solutions so they were bacteria-free. For 35 years she did research on tuberculosis, first with Esmond R. Long at University of Chicago and then moving with him in 1932 to the Henry Phipps Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1938, she received the Trudeau Medal from the National Tuberculosis Association in honor of her lifetime work on tuberculosis. She was the first woman to receive this award. In 1942, she received the Francis P. Garvan Gold Medal from the American Chemical Society. This Medal was given for isolating the active substance in tuberculin and for preparing the International Standard of Tuberculin. She received other honors and awards and five honorary degrees (Mappen, pp. 357–358).