Background
Kathryn Anderson was born Kathryn Dorothy Duncan in Lancashire, England in 1939.
Kathryn Anderson was born Kathryn Dorothy Duncan in Lancashire, England in 1939.
University of Cambridge. Harvard Medical School.
She was the first woman to hold office in the American College of Surgeons and the first woman president of the American Pediatric Surgical Association. She began studying at Cambridge University in 1958, and went on to earn a bachelor and masters of arts from the university. She met French Anderson, an American, in an anatomy class while at Cambridge University.
After moving to the United States, Anderson continued studying medicine in 1964 at Harvard Medical School.
Upon graduating, the dean denied her a surgical internship, saying women were too weak to be surgeons. She ended up completing an internship in pediatric medicine at Boston Children"s Hospital.
A year later, in 1965, she moved to Washington District of Columbia and completed her general surgical residency at Georgetown University Hospital. Over the two years she was at Georgetown University Hospital, she was only assigned seven cases.
Believing that discrimination against her gender was affecting her training, Anderson left the hospital and began working in various community hospitals.
In these hospitals, she worked on 700 cases in the first year. Anderson joined Children"s National Medical Center for a fellowship in pediatric surgery in 1970. She also became chair of the surgery department at Children"s National Medical Center.
In 1985, Anderson became chair of the surgery section of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and a year later she began serving on the editorial board of the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, as well as numerous other medical journals.
In 1992, Anderson was named surgeon-in-chief and vice president of surgery at Children"s Hospital in Los Angeles, California The same year, she became secretary and the first woman officer of the American College of Surgeons.
From 1999 to 2000, she served as the first woman president of the American Pediatric Surgical Association.
