Dr. Stahlman, a friend and former mentor of Gladstone president Robert W. Mahley and senior investigator Thomas Bersot, recounted the difficulties of applying and being rejected by leading medical schools, including Harvard and Johns Hopkins, because she was a woman. And when she finally was accepted to Vanderbilt in 1943, she was one of only four women in the class. Perhaps choosing pediatrics as her specialty was the breakthrough, “because women ought to know something about that,” she joked. She earned her MD from Vanderbilt in 1946.

Her career as a researcher has focused on the respiratory problems of premature and newborn infants. She began at a time when little was known about pulmonary disease, nor were there any medical devices, such as respirators sized for infants. “I was told the best way to learn about pulmonary disease was to teach it,” Dr. Stahlman said. So she spent her summer teaching herself.

Without today's tools or technologies, Dr. Stahlman and her colleagues had to improvise to find the answers to their questions about causes and potential treatments for hyaline membrane disease–a condition that frequently led to respiratory distress and death in premature babies. Methods of diagnosing and monitoring the progress of hyaline membrane disease by measuring blood gases were also improvised.

Her research and resourcefulness lead to the development of the first neonatal intensive care unit in the world in 1961. And while the survival rate for premature babies has greatly improved thanks to Dr. Stahlman's work, she noted that “I still can't stop babies from being born prematurely.” She adds that much of this problem is a social problem-that poverty is a risk factor for premature delivery.

Dr. Stahlman emphasized that it's everyone's duty to get involved.