13. Jane C. Wright
Jane C. Wright was a cancer researcher who is most notable for her contributions to chemotherapy and using methotrexate to treat breast cancer and skin cancer, according to a Wikipedia page about her.Most of Wright’s work included studying how certain drugs effect tumors. She was the first person to discover that methotrexate was effective against fighting tumors. With the discovery, chemotherapy became a test and proven effective cancer therapy resulting in millions of lives saved.
She pioneered her work in chemotherapy to focus on administering multiple drugs, but in sequential and varying dosages to increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy to minimize side effects. That work helped created treatments for breast and skin cancer and developed a chemotherapy protocol that could increase skin cancer patient lifespans up to 10 years.
Wright graduated from Smith College with an art degree in 1942. She went on to earn a medical degree from New York Medical College in 1945. Following medical school, she did her residencies at Bellevue Hospital from 1945 to 1946 and Harlem Hospital from 1947 to 1948.