Jeanne Montgomery Smith
SMITH, MONTGOMERY, STEINLEN, ELLIOT, ZACHARY
Posted By: Sarah Fletcher (email)
Date: 11/19/2015 at 10:12:53
Jeanne Montgomery Smith was born on December 5, 1917 in Toronto, Canada and died on October 27, 2015. She was the daughter of William Sargent Montgomery K.C., lawyer and Jeanne Compendu Montgomery, a language teacher immigrant from Lausanne, Switzerland. Her father was born in San Francisco and his grandfather was US Senator for California and introduced the first Susan B. Anthony Bill for Women’s’ Suffrage to Lincoln’s Government. Jeanne had considerable artistic ability and her Swiss great uncle Theophile Steinlen was a well known poster artist in Paris. Jeanne drew for the University of Toronto Medical Museum and helped illustrate several medical text books.
Jeanne graduated from Branksome Hall High School in 1936 and graduated MD, Toronto in 1942. She was an Intern at Toronto General Hospital and Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at MacGill University Hospital in Montreal, Canada. Jeanne served two years as a volunteer Surgeon Lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Navy with duties in the Naval Hospital in Halifax at the end of the World War II transatlantic Convoy. She passed with two others (out of 15 candidates) the written exams for FRCPC but was failed in the oral exams because she was a woman. She refused in protest to resit the exams as was recommended.
She did further study and clinical work at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London where she met her future husband Ian Maclean Smith, MD of Glasgow, Scotland. They both taught at the University of Sheffield in England. Jeanne continued her training at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore where she completed a two year Fellowship in Infectious Disease with Dr. Fred Bang. After this she did two years of Fellowship in Allergy with Dr. Robert Cook at the New York Allergy Institute. She was on the staff of Barnes Hospital and the Washington University Allergy Clinic for two years.
Jeanne was a Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Iowa from 1955 until she retired at age 77 to continue further nonclinical studies in Allergy and Immunology until 1993: retiring after 51 years of practice, teaching, research, and writing. With her husband, Dr. Smith also founded a new medical school at East Tennessee University in Johnston City, Tennessee in 1976-1978.
Despite severe dyslexia, she wrote a number of highly original research papers in her field of expertise. Her monograph entitled “A Useful Life. A Ringside Seat to Developments in Medicine in the Past Fifty Years.” is available in paperback at Lulu.com and as a Nook book at Barnes & Noble.
Jeanne was elected to the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame in 1982 as a role model for young women interested in careers in Medicine. She was elected as a Living Legend of the Women’s American Medical Association and in 2008, she received the first Chairman of Medicine’s, Award of Excellence.
She spoke at many meetings in the US and abroad. Jeanne served on many committees (including the Research Ethics Committee and the Transplant Donor Death Committee) and was Chair of the Iowa City Unitarian Society. She was bilingual in French and helped entertain official guests of the US Government for the CIVIC Society. She was also the hostess for many immigrants to the US from the Philippines, Eritrea, Honduras, Hmong, India, Chile, England, Belgium, and South Africa.
Dr. Smith is survived by her five children: Dr. Robert Maclean Smith is an Allergist and Professor of Medicine at the University of South Dakota; Dr. William Smith was a researcher at Intel and was a contributor to the development of several of their processors and his wife Julie Elliot works for IBM; Dr. Douglas Maclean Smith was until recently Professor of Pathology at the University of Michigan; Dr. Janellen Smith and her husband Dr. Christopher Zachary are Professors of Dermatology at the University of California, Irvine; Scott Montgomery Smith of Iowa City is a free lance writer of music and plays for the theater. She is also survived by 9 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren. Her brother Dr. Douglas Montgomery of Ottawa, Emeritus High Commissioner for Energy of Canada also survives her.
Jeanne and her family want to thank the medical and nursing staffs of Oaknoll Retirement Community and the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics for their expert care during her many illnesses.
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