Dr. Hazel Mansell Gore to be Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame 2014 Inductee
MARION, Ala. – Dr. Hazel Mansell Gore, considered “a giant among women in medicine in Alabama,” will be inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame on Thursday, March 6.
The ceremony will take place at 10:30 a.m. in Alumnae Auditorium on the Judson College campus in Marion, Ala., and is open to the public.
Although born and educated in Australia, Dr. Gore lived in Birmingham, Ala., 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’s father had dreams of her pursuing a career in journalism; however, Hazel wanted to be a physician. As a result, she enrolled in the University of Sydney in the fall of 1940.
Due to the need for physicians in WWII, Hazel and her classmates were placed in a rigorous, 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, considered one of the founding fathers of modern gynecologic pathology. They produced a series of articles (Tumors of the Female Organ, Par 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, Dr. Gore was jointly recruited by Department of Pathology and the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at UAB.
Dr. Edward E. Partridge, Director of the Comprehensive Cancer and Professor of Gynecologic Oncology at UAB, said that “Over the next two and one-half decades her influence on physicians in training at the University of Alabama at Birmingham was absolutely remarkable.”
According to Dr. Partridge her influence is still keenly felt by multiple pathologists, obstetrician gynecologists, and gynecologic oncologists throughout the state and the nation. He considers her “a giant among women in medicine in Alabama.”
In 2007, Dr. 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. Dr. Gore was admitted to the hospital for coronary bypass surgery, but she died on July 14, 2001, four days after entering the hospital.
The AWHOF, founded in 1970, is housed in the A. Howard Bean Hall on the campus of Judson College in Marion, Ala.
The induction ceremony, open to the public at no charge, will be Thursday, March 6, 2014, at 10:30 a.m., in Alumnae Auditorium on the Judson College campus.
Additional information is available on the AWHOF website at www.awhf.org.
