Frieda Fraser

Frieda Fraser
1925 graduation photograph
Born	Ethel Frida Fraser (1899-08-30)30 August 1899 York, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Died	29 July 1994(1994-07-29) (aged 94) Burlington, Ontario, Canada
Nationality	Canadian
Other names	Frieda Helen Fraser, Helen Frieda Fraser
Occupation	physician, scientist and academic
Years active	1925–1965
Known for	research on infectious diseases
Notable work	archive of letters with her partner Edith Williams

Frieda Fraser (30 August 1899 – 29 July 1994) was a Canadian physician, scientist and academic who worked in infectious disease, including research on scarlet fever and tuberculosis. After finishing her medical studies at the University of Toronto in 1925, she completed a two-year internship in the United States, studying and working in Manhattan and Philadelphia. Afterward, she conducted research in the Connaught Laboratories concentrating on infectious disease, making important contributions in the pre-penicillin age to isolation of the strains of likely to lead to disease. From 1928, she lectured in the Department of Hygiene at the University of Toronto on preventive medicine, working her way up from a teaching assistant to a full professor by 1955. In college, around 1917 Fraser met her life partner, Edith Williams, and though their families tried to keep them apart, their relationship spanned until Edith's death in 1979. The correspondence between the two has been preserved and is an important legacy for the lesbian history of Canada.

Ethel Frida Fraser's birth was recorded on 30 August 1899 in York, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Helene (née Zahn) and William Henry Fraser. It is unknown when her name began being styled as Frieda Helen Fraser. Her father was a native Ontarian who had graduated from the University of Toronto (U of T) and taught at the Upper Canada College before being appointed as a lecturer in Italian and Spanish at U of T. He prolifically wrote textbooks which were used in the provencial schools for many years. Her mother was a native of Germany and the couple's children, William Kaspar, Donald and Frieda were fluent in German and French. Fraser was home schooled until 1914, when she enrolled in Havergal College. Soon thereafter, in 1916, her father died and her brother Donald became an encouraging influence for her. In 1917, Fraser entered University College to study physics and biology. During her college years, she joined the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority where she met Edith Williams. She completed her undergraduate degree in 1922 and enrolled in medical school, earning her Bachelor of Medicine in 1925. Hers was the first class that required students to complete six years of study and had quotas limiting the number of women who could attend. Because few hospitals would accept women doctors for internships, Fraser went to the United States in the summer of 1925 to begin her internship at the New York Infirmary for Women and Children.