Elizabeth Fee, former chief of the history of medicine division of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), died Oct. 17, 2018, of ALS, at age 71.
Born in Northern Ireland in 1946, Fee traveled as a child with her parents to China, Malaysia, India, Egypt, and throughout Europe and Great Britain. Eventually she was schooled in her native Ireland and at Cambridge University in England, where she graduated in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree in biology. In 1978 she earned a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science from Princeton.
Fee began teaching at SUNY Binghamton, where she was popular as a scholar of science and medical history and taught new courses in human sexuality. In the 1980s she was a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.
After Johns Hopkins, Fee gave nearly 22 years of dedicated service to the NLM as head of its History of Medicine Division. Located on the campus of the National Institutes of Health, Fee led her division to “new levels of global access and support for broadly-based scholarship.” She wrote, co-wrote, edited, or co-edited almost 30 books and hundreds of articles.
Fee is survived by her wife and lifetime partner, Mary Garafolo.
Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.