American Men and Women in Medicine, Applied Sciences and Engineering with Roots in Czechoslovakia

Helen Brooke Taussig (1898-1986), b. Cambridge, MA, of Bohemian ancestry, was a physician, specializing in cardiology and is considered the founder of pediatric cardiology. As an adolescent Taussig struggled with dyslexia, a disability that impairs reading comprehension. Despite that she did well in school due to diligent work and extensive tutoring from her father. She graduated from Cambridge School for Girls in 1917, then studied for two years at Radcliffe College before earning a Bachelor's degree and Phi Beta Kappa membership from the University of California, Berkeley in 1921. After graduating, Taussig wished to study at Harvard Medical School, but the medical program did not accept women (this was the case until 1945). Instead she considered applying to study public health, partially because her father thought it a more suitable field for women but learned that as a woman she could attend the program but would not be recognized with a degree. Taussig ended up taking classes at Boston University in histology, bacteriology, and anatomy, without expecting to receive a degree. Taussig applied to transfer to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, one of the few medical schools to admit women at the time and was accepted as a full-degree candidate. After completing her MD degree in 1927 at Johns Hopkins, Taussig remained for one year as a cardiology fellow and for two years as a pediatrics intern and received two Archibald Fellowships (1927–30). Taussig wanted to specialize in Internal Medicine, but there was only one position available for a woman in that field, and it was already taken; she therefore decided to specialize in pediatrics, and ended up working in pediatric cardiology, a field that was still in its infancy. In due course, she has become known as one of the most celebrated physicians of the 20th century. Starting in the 1920s, her early work focused on the clinical and anatomic manifestations of rheumatic fever. Later, in the mid-1940s, her ideas about the treatment of so-called blue babies led to the development of one of the first surgical procedures for treating infants with congenital cardiac defects. Through her research and teaching she was a leader in the development of the medical specialty of pediatric cardiology. In the 1960s, she was responsible for investigating the epidemic of serious congenital limb malformations in European children. She documented that the malformations were caused by the use of thalidomide by their mothers when pregnant. She continued to publish articles in the medical literature long after her 1963 retirement and, at the time of her death at age eighty-seven, was actively engaged in research on the avian heart. Numerous honors came her way. At age sixty-seven, she became the first woman president of the American Heart Association. Like her father before her, she was honored as a chevalier in the French Legion of Honor (1947). President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1964). Bio: Neill, C A; Clark, E B (1999), “The Paediatric Cardiology Hall of Fame: Helen Brooke Taussig MD. May 24, 1898 to May 21, 1986,” Cardiology in the Young, 9, No. 1 (1999), pp. 104–108; Rechcigl, Miloslav, Jr., “Žena, která zachránila na tisíce dětských životu” (Woman who Saved Thousands of Children’s Lives” in: Postavy naší Ameriky. Praha: Pražská edice, 2000, pp. 332-333; “Helen Brooke Taussig,” in: Czechs, pp. 63-675; “Helen Brooke Taussig,” in: Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, p. 2020; Elliott, Ellen, “Women in Science: Helen Taussig (1898-1986),” in: The Jackson Laboratory. See - https://www.jax.org/news-and-insights/jax-blog/2017/october/women-in-science-helen-taussig; “Helen B. Taussig,” in: Wikipedia. See - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_B._Taussig; “Helen Brooke Taussig,” in: Encyclopaedia Britannica. See - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Helen-Brooke-Taussig; “Helen Brooke Taussig,” in: Beyond the Sea of Beer, pp. 703-704; “Helen Brooke Taussig,” in: Czechoslovak Jews, p. 304; “Helen Brooke Taussig,” in: American Women, pp. 162-163. Frank J. Malina (1912-1981), b. Brenham, TX, of Czech ancestry, was an aeronautical engineer and painter, especially known for becoming both a pioneer in the art world and the realm of scientific engineering. Frank's formal education began with a degree in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University in 1934. The same year he received a scholarship to study mechanical engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), where he obtained his Doctor degree in 1940. In 1935, while a graduate student at Caltech, Malina persuaded Professor of Aeronautics Theodore von Kármán to allow him to pursue studies into rocketry and rocket propulsion. The formal goal was development of a sounding rocket. Malina and five associates became known at Caltech as the "Suicide Squad" because of their dangerous experiments (and failures) when testing rocket motor designs. Malina's group was forced to move their operations away from the main Caltech campus into the more remote Arroyo Seco. This site and the research Malina was conducting would later become the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Malina served as the second Director of JPL. In 1939, the Société astronomique de France (French Astronomical Society) awarded Malina the Prix d'Astronautique for his contribution to the study of interplanetary travel and astronautics. By late 1945, Malina's rockets had outgrown the facility at Arroyo Seco, and his tests were moved to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Here, the project's WAC Corporal sounding rocket was the first U.S. rocket to break the 50-mile altitude mark, becoming the first sounding rocket to reach space. During 1947, with rocket research in high gear, Malina's demanding travel and administrative schedule, along with a dislike of so much rocketry research being devoted to weapons system and not scientific research, caused him to re-evaluate his career and leave Aerojet. He then moved to France and joined the fledgling United Nations as secretariat of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) under Julian Huxley. In 1951, Malina became head of UNESCO's division of scientific research. Two years later, Malina left UNESCO to pursue an interest in kinetic art. In 1968 in Paris, he founded Leonardo, an international peer-reviewed research journal that featured articles written by artists on their own work and focused on the interactions between the contemporary arts with the sciences and new technologies. The Leonardo journal is still published as of 2018 as a project of Leonardo/ISAST, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology. In 1990, Malina was inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame. In the late 1950s, Malina returned to rocketry and helped found the International Academy of Astronautics, created to promote international cooperation in astronautics. The academy was unique in that it transcended Cold War barriers. Malina made numerous contributions to rocketry during his career, including the theory of constant-thrust long-duration solid fuel rocket motors, development of a safety pressure relief valve for solid propellant rocket motors, and development of a hydrazine-nitric acid fuel, which was used to propel the Apollo Service and Lunar Excursion Modules.