Ruth Smith Lloyd
| Ruth Smith Lloyd | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
January 17, 1917 Washington, D.C. |
| Died | February 5, 1995 (aged 78) Washington, D.C. |
| Fields | Anatomy |
| Institutions | |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | First African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in anatomy. |
Ruth Smith Lloyd (January 17, 1917 – February 5, 1995) was a 20th-century scientist whose research focused on fertility, the relationship of sex hormones to growth, and the female sex cycle. She earned a Ph.D. in the field of anatomy from Western Reserve University in 1941, making her the first African-American woman to have reached this achievement. Lloyd worked on the faculty of medicine at Howard University from 1942 to 1977. She married physician Sterling Morrison Lloyd in 1939, and had three children. She died of cancer in 1995.
Ruth Smith was born in Washington, DC on January 17, 1917. Her parents were Mary Elizabeth (Morris) Smith, who was a clerk in the US Treasury Department, and Bradley Donald Smith, who was a pullman porter. She had a sister named Hilda B. Smith and another named Otwiner Demond, who became a school principal. She was the youngest child. Lloyd attended the prestigious, historically black, Dunbar High School.
Lloyd attended Mount Holyoke College, which was then a mostly white institution. Her choice of college was reportedly influenced by the experience of her brother-in-law, William Montague Cobb, who was married to Hilda. Lloyd graduated with a bachelor of arts cum laude in 1937, majoring in zoology.
From 1937 to 1938, Lloyd studied for a master's degree in zoology at Howard University supported by a fellowship, under Ernest Everett Just. She had planned on becoming a school teacher, but was encouraged to undertake further study. Lloyd gained a fellowship from the Rosenwald Fund and undertook doctoral studies under Boris Rubenstein at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She studied the fertility of macaque monkeys, becoming the first African-American woman to gain a PhD in anatomy with her dissertation, Adolescence of macaques (Macacus rhesus) in 1941.
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