Dr. Hazel Mansell Gore, a pioneering woman in medicine in Alabama, will be inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame in March, Judson College announced.Although born and educated in Australia, Gore lived in Birmingham from 1969 to 2001, except for three years when she was Director of Cytopathology at the Rochester General Hospital in Rochester, New York. During that time, she practiced and taught medicine in the Department of Pathology and the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.
Hazel enrolled in the University of Sydney in the fall of 1940.
Because of the need for physicians during World War II, she and her classmates were placed in an accelerated program, and she graduated with her medical degree in 1945, at the age of 22.
She practiced medicine in Australia before moving to New York in 1951, to study in the new field of gynecologic pathology.
In 1953, she became an Assistant in Pathology at the Harvard Medical School. She worked with Dr. A.T. Hertig, one of the founding fathers of modern gynecologic pathology. They produced a series of articles (Tumors of the Female Organ, Part 1, Part II and Part III), published between 1956 and 1961, which were considered the standard resource for gynecologic pathology at that time.
In 1969, Gore was jointly recruited by Department of Pathology and the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at UAB.
“Over the next two and one-half decades her influence on physicians in training at the University of Alabama at Birmingham was absolutely remarkable," said Dr. Edward E. Partridge, Director of the Comprehensive Cancer and Professor of Gynecologic Oncology at UAB.
Partridge said her influence is still felt by multiple pathologists, obstetrician gynecologists, and gynecologic oncologists throughout the state and the nation.
In 2007, Gore was among a select few gynecological pathologists from around the world honored in the journal Pathology, by Dr. Robert H. Young, Harvard Medical School, for her influence in the development of modern gynecologic pathology.
Although state law mandated that she retire at age 70, she continued teaching, consulting and publishing as a volunteer.
According to the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame’s guidelines, a nominee must have been deceased for two years. Gore underwent coronary bypass surgery, and died four days later on July 14, 2001.
The AWHOF, founded in 1970, is housed in the A. Howard Bean Hall on the campus of Judson College.
The induction ceremony will be Thursday, March 6, 2014, at 10:30 a.m., in Alumnae Auditorium on the Judson College campus, and is open to the public. Additional information is available on the AWHOF website at www.awhf.org.