External links
- Home page
- "Alice S. Whittemore: An Oral History," Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program, 2015.
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Alice Whittemore | |
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| Nationality | US American |
| Alma mater | CUNY Graduate Center (Ph.D.) Hunter College (M.A.) Marymount Manhattan (B.S.) |
| Awards | AAAS fellow (1992) Janet L. Norwood Award (2004) Florence Nightingale David Award (2005) ASA Nathan Mantel Lifetime Achievement Award (2010) R. A. Fisher Lectureship (2016) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Biostatistics, group theory |
| Institutions | Stanford University New York University Hunter College |
| Thesis | The Frattini Subgroup (1967) |
| Doctoral advisor | Gilbert Baumslag |
Alice Segers Whittemore is an American epidemiologist and biostatistician who studies the effects of genetics and lifestyle on cancer, following an earlier career as a pure mathematician studying group theory. She works as a professor of health research and policy and of biomedical data science at Stanford University, [1] and has served as president of the International Biometric Society. [2]
Whittemore originally studied pure mathematics. She obtained a bachelor's degree in 1958 from Marymount Manhattan College, and a master's degree in 1964 from Hunter College. [3] Whittemore completed a Ph.D. in 1967, from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York with a dissertation on Frattini subgroups supervised by Gilbert Baumslag. [4] [5]
As a professor of mathematics at Hunter College, she became interested in epidemiology and statistics. She pursue a fellowship to New York University to accomplish that shift of interests, under the mentorship of Joseph Keller. [6] Keller and Whittemore married and moved together to Stanford in 1978. [2] [6] There Whittemore became a professor in the Department of Health Research and Policy. She was chief of epidemiology there from 1997 to 2001, and later became co-chair of the department. [2] Keller died in 2016. [6]
One of Whittemore's studies found a link between fertility drugs and ovarian cancer, especially strong among women who were treated with the drugs but failed to conceive. [7]
Recently, Whittemore has contributed her expertise in a paper published in the American Journal of Epidemiology to investigating racial and ethnic differences in ovarian cancer risk. [8]
In 1992, Whittemore was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. [9] She is also a fellow of the American Statistical Association, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine. [2]
In 2004, she won the Janet L. Norwood Award for outstanding achievement by a woman in the statistical sciences. [2] In 2010, the Statistics in Epidemiology section of the American Statistical Association gave her their Nathan Mantel Lifetime Achievement Award. [10] She was the recipient of the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies Florence Nightingale David Award in 2005 [11] and R. A. Fisher Lectureship in 2016 "for her fundamental contributions to biostatistics and epidemiology, covering a wide range of topics from environmental risk assessment to genetic linkage analysis, genetic association studies and cancer epidemiology; for bringing her statistical and mathematical insight to bear on the collection and interpretation of scientific data; for her leadership in large consortia of cancer studies; and for being a role model for many young scientists". [12]
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