Winfred Ashby

W. Ashby was 14 years old when she migrated with her parents to the U.S.A. She graduated B.S. from Chicago University in 1903 and M.S. from Washington University, St. Louis, in 1905. She then went to the Philippines to study malnutrition.

Back in the United States she taught school physics and chemistry before beginning a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic. It was here that she developed the Ashby technique for estimating red cell survival and became the first person to establish the correct red cell life span. Her other fields of research included diagnostic techniques in syphilis and the study of carbonic anhydrase in the brain. In 1924 she left the Mayo Clinic to work in at St. Elizabeth Hospital, Washington, D.C., where she remained until her retirement.