U.S. National Institutes of Health

Irena Grasberg Koprowska, MD — diagnostic and therapeutic services (cytopathology), diagnostic and therapeutic services (pathology)

Courtesy Irena Grasberg Koprowska, MD

Dr. Irena Grasberg Koprowska (1917–2012) began her medical career after fleeing her native Poland and the invading German army in 1939. As a young physician who worked in a pathology lab with little supervision and virtually no textbooks, she became a pioneer in the field of cytopathology. Dr. Irena Koprowska co-authored, with Dr. George Papanicolaou, a case report of the earliest diagnosis of lung cancer by a sputum smear. She became the first female full professor at Philadelphia’s Hahnemann University in 1964.

Read more about Dr. Irena Grasberg Koprowska.

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