Lynn Conway, a pioneering computer scientist who was fired by IBM in the 1960s after telling managers that she was transgender, despite her significant technological innovations — and who received a rare formal apology from the company 52 years later — died on June 9 in Jackson, Mich. She was 86. Her husband, Charles Rogers,…
Academic conferences are usually staid affairs, but the 1973 International Symposium on Gender Identity, held in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, was an exception. Everything was peaceful until a psychologist named John Money stood and yelled, “Mickey Diamond, I hate your guts!” Milton Diamond, a sexologist who had gone by Mickey since childhood, was sitting on the other…
When Kris Hallenga was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer — the most advanced form — at 23, questions swirled through her head: “Why didn’t anyone tell me to check my boobs? Why didn’t I know I could get breast cancer at 23?” If she hadn’t known that she could have breast cancer so young,…
There’s a difference between how things are supposed to work, and how they actually work. And very rarely do the ones in charge publicly address the things that are silently understood, but never spoken about. It’s why what Charlie Baker said this week was so out of the norm. Was the punishment of Tennessee Volunteers…
The national body that certifies lactation consultants is investigating whether a consultant in Boise, Idaho, has been inappropriately pushing an unproven procedure on new mothers struggling to breastfeed, according to a letter reviewed by The New York Times. The lactation consultant, Melanie Henstrom, was featured in an investigation by The Times that examined the explosion…
Brooke Ellison, who after being paralyzed from the neck down by a childhood car accident went on to graduate from Harvard and became a professor and devoted disability rights advocate, died on Sunday in Stony Brook, N.Y. She was 45. Her death, in a hospital, was caused by complications of quadriplegia, her mother, Jean Ellison,…
Claire M. Fagin, a leading expert on, advocate for and change agent in the profession of nursing, and one of the first women to lead an Ivy League university, the University of Pennsylvania, died on Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 97. Her death was confirmed by her son and only immediate survivor,…
