Hattie Elizabeth Alexander was born in Baltimore in 1901. She loved athletics, but wasn’t an outstanding academic student. In 1923, she graduated from Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. Then, she worked as a bacteriologist for three years for the U.S. Public Health Service and Maryland Public Health Service. After showing stellar performance, she was accepted to John Hopkins University where she performed exceptionally well in her studies and received her Medical Degree in 1930. After completing her education at John Hopkins, she went on to train at the John Hopkins Hospital, the Babies Hospital, Vanderbilt Clinic of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. For the…show more content… Dr. Hattie Elizabeth Alexander’s work is important, because less people were being killed and her studies could later be built on to find cures to other viruses created related to influenzal meningitis. She first became interested in influenzal meningitis while interning at John Hopkins Hospital and anti-influenzal serum taken from horses had failed, she took in consideration the success of using a rabbit serum to treat pneumonia. Using rabbit serums helped her develop the effective cure for influenzal meningitis. In recognition, she received many awards including the E. Mead Johnson Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Elizabeth Blackwell Award from New York Infirmary and the first women to receive the Oscar B. Hunter Memorial Award of the American Therapeutic Society. Her work with influenzal meningitis led her to study antibiotics, and she made progress in understanding the genetic mutation of bacteria to develop resistance to antibiotics. Throughout her career she remained active in public health, serving on the influenza commission under the secretary of war during World War II, and as consultant to the New York City Department of
