Pool, Judith Graham (1919–1975)

American physiologist . Born on June 1, 1919, in Queens, New York; died of a brain tumor on July 13, 1975, in Stanford, California; daughter of Leon Wilfred Graham (a stockbroker) and Nellie (Baron) Graham (a schoolteacher); University of Chicago, B.S., 1939, Ph.D., 1946; married Ithiel de Sola Pool (a political scientist), in 1938 (divorced 1953); married Maurice D. Sokolow (a professor of hematology and medicine), in 1972 (divorced 1975); children: (first marriage) Jonathan Robert (b. 1942) and Jeremy David (b. 1945); Lorna (b. 1964).

Judith Graham Pool was born in 1919 in Queens, New York, the eldest of three children of Leon Wilfred Graham, a stockbroker from England, and Nellie Baron Graham , a schoolteacher. After graduating from Jamaica High School, she attended the University of Chicago, where she was a member of Sigma Xi and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. In 1938, during her junior year, she married Ithiel de Sola Pool, a political science student with whom she would have two sons, Jonathan Robert (b. 1942) and Jeremy David (b. 1945). (Her third child, Lorna, would be born in 1964, after her 1953 divorce from her first husband.)

After receiving her bachelor of science degree in 1939, Pool continued her education at the University of Chicago while also working as an assistant in the physiology department between 1940 and 1942. Between 1943 and 1945, she taught physics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Muscle physiology was the basis for her doctoral dissertation, and her groundbreaking research demonstrated the electrical potential of the membrane of a single muscle fiber. Pool was under the direction of the well-known physiologist Ralph Waldo Gerard while she was doing her muscle research, and she helped to develop the Ling-Gerard microelectrode, although she was never given credit for her participation. She received her Ph.D. in 1946, and for the following four years worked at a variety of jobs, including teaching, research, and secretarial positions. She moved with her family in 1949 to California, where her husband worked at Stanford University's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace. Pool was employed as a research associate at the Stanford Research Institute.

In 1953, Pool received a grant from the Bank of America-Giannini Foundation to study hemophilia, and worked at the Stanford University School of Medicine as a research fellow and as a trainee. By 1954, she had published her first paper and was working independently in the field of coagulation, a situation that was rare for one who had only one year of training. After just three years, Pool was promoted to senior research associate. She lived and worked in Oslo, Norway, on a Fulbright research fellowship in 1958–59, after which she returned to Stanford, where she was made a senior scientist in 1970. She was so well known in her field that by 1972 she was promoted to a full professor, skipping all the lower professorial ranks.

Pool worked on several aspects of blood coagulation, but perhaps her most valuable contribution was the work that she did, along with two colleagues, to isolate blood's antihemophilic factor (AHF), also called Factor VIII. This led to the successful treatment of hemophilia A, because Factor VIII is used in transfusions given to hemophiliacs to control the bleeding disorder caused by this inherited disease. Pool developed a method to precipitate out a cold-insoluble protein, or cryoprecipitate, which contains Factor VIII. The ability to obtain the factor from a single donor or from large quantities of donated blood revolutionized the treatment of hemophilia. With Factor VIII, hemophiliacs could receive the specific clotting factor needed to help control bleeding rather than simply receiving transfusions to make up for the blood they had lost. Her procedure, which was first published in 1964, became the standard for blood banks. (In later years, due to the transmission of diseases such as HIV and hepatitis through blood transfusion, the blood bank industry was forced to screen all donated blood and to specially treat collected Factor VIII to prohibit the transmission of these diseases.) Pool also researched techniques to measure blood coagulation. In particular, she focused on the measurement of a Factor VIII inhibitor that develops in approximately 10 to 20 percent of hemophiliacs who have had numerous transfusions. When a hemophiliac develops the Factor VIII inhibitor, their bleeding typically worsens.

Pool's discovery of the AHF cryoprecipitate made her internationally known. She was invited to lecture at several institutions and became a member of the national scientific advisory committees for the American Red Cross Blood Program and the National Institutes of Health. She also received a number of awards, including the National Hemophilia Foundation's Murray Thelin Award (1968), the Elizabeth Blackwell Award from Hobart and William Smith Colleges (1973), and the Professional Achievement Award from the University of Chicago (1975). Pool also worked to create more opportunities in science for women; she was elected co-president of the Association of Women in Science in 1971, and served as first chair of the Professional Women of Stanford University Medical Center. Pool died from a brain tumor in 1975, when she was only 56 years old. Soon thereafter, the National Hemophilia Foundation changed the name of its awards to the Judith Graham Pool Research Fellowships in her honor.

sources:

Bailey, Martha J. American Women in Science. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1994.

Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Hurd Green, eds. Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1980.

suggested reading:

Brinkhous, K.M. "Judith Graham Pool, Ph.D. (1919–1975): An Appreciation," in Thrombosis and Haemostasis. April 30, 1976.

Massie, Robert, and Suzanne Massie. Journey, 1975.

collections:

Biographical material, news releases, and lists of Pool's publications are located in the archives of Stanford University Medical Center in Stanford, California.

Christine Miner Miner , freelance writer, Ann Arbor, Michigan