Being first came naturally to her.
Florence Sabin 1893 taught zoology at Smith to pay for medical school—and went on to break barrier after barrier in science. She was the first woman on the faculty at Johns Hopkins, the first woman to become a full member of the Rockefeller Institute, the first woman to lead the American Association of Anatomists, and the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 1966, Sabin-Reed Hall was named in honor of Sabin and fellow medical pioneer Dorothy Reed Mendenhall 1895.