Dora B. Goldstein
April 25, 1922-Oct. 2, 2011
Palo Alto, California
Dora B. Goldstein, 89, a Stanford professor of pharmacology and pioneer of women in medicine, died Oct. 2, 2011, in Palo Alto after a fall. A member of the first class at Harvard Medical School to admit women, she worked to advance the cause of women in medicine and served in leadership positions in the civil rights and gay rights movements.
Dora Benedict was born April 25, 1922, in Milton, Mass., to George Wheeler Benedict and Marjory Pierce Benedict. She had a sister, Margaret, and brothers George and Laurence. She attended Bryn Mawr college, where she was coxswain on the crew team, but left before graduation to work on chemicals in the World War II war effort. She was admitted to Harvard Medical School along with 11 other women, the first ever admitted, and received her M.D. degree in 1949. She married Avram Goldstein, who had been her professor at Harvard, and both became prominent researchers in pharmacology and members of the department at Stanford University, where they lived starting in 1955.
Dora B. Goldstein was a leading expert on alcohol and alcoholism. She served as president of the Research Society on Alcoholism, received the society's annual award for scientific excellence in 1981, and won the Jellinek Memorial Award for alcohol studies in 1996. Her book Pharmacology of Alcohol (Oxford University Press) appeared in 1983. Her work established basic biological principles underlying alcoholism, such as the metabolism of alcohol and its wide-ranging effects in the body. She published in leading journals such as Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and served on the advisory board of the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism. She was also an innovator in using computer-based simulation to teach molecular pharmacology in the 1980s.
Goldstein championed the cause of women in the field of medicine throughout her career. After years in non-tenure track positions at Stanford, working in research while raising four children, she was promoted to tenured full professor in the medical school.
She helped establish and co-directed a mentoring program for young faculty at the medical school starting in 1994. The Dora B. Goldstein Collection at the Stanford medical school library houses the archives of women's struggles for equality there. Goldstein played a central role in the Professional Women of Stanford Medical School (1969-74), the Joint Committee on the Status and Tenure of Women (1970-77), and the Katharine McCormick Society (1979-81).
In the 1960s, Goldstein participated in the civil rights movement, serving as vice president of the local NAACP and fundraising for the group. In the 1990s she became a leader in the gay rights movement and served for a decade on the national board of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). She lectured on the biology of sexual orientation.
In the house on Stanford campus where she lived for 50 years, Goldstein enjoyed gardening, sunbathing, knitting and cooking.
Goldstein is survived by her husband, Avram Goldstein, of Palo Alto; her children, Margaret Wallace of Longmont, Colo., Dan Goldstein of Port Townsend, Wash., Joshua Goldstein of Amherst, Mass., and Michael Goldstein of San Francisco; grandchildren, Andrew Wallace of Atlanta, Ga., Jennifer Goldstein of Port Townsend, Wash., Robert Goldstein of Portland, Ore., and Solomon and Ruth Goldstein-Rose of Amherst, Mass.; and her sister, Margaret of Harwich, Mass. She was predeceased by her brothers.
A memorial will be held Sunday, Oct. 9, at 2 p.m. at Vi Living, 620 Sand Hill Road, Palo Alto. Memorial donations may be sent to PFLAG, 1828 L St., NW, Suite 660, Washington, D.C. 20036.
Tags: teacher/educator
