Alabama Women's Hall of Fame
Dr. Hazel Mansell Gore was born and educated in Australia and then lived in Birmingham, Alabama, from 1969 until her death in 2001. Prior to her move to Alabama, she was director of cytopathology at the Rochester General Hospital in Rochester, New York. While in Alabama, she practiced and taught medicine in the Department of Pathology and the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB).
Although her father had dreams of her pursuing a career in journalism, Hazel wanted to be a physician. She enrolled in the University of Sydney in the fall of 1940.
Due to the need for physicians in WWII, Hazel and her classmates were placed in a rigorous, accelerated program, and she graduated with her medical degree in 1945, at the age of 22. She practiced medicine in Australia before moving to New York in 1951, to study in the new field of gynecologic pathology.
In 1953, she became an Assistant in Pathology at the Harvard Medical School. She worked with Dr. A.T. Hertig, considered one of the founding fathers of modern gynecologic pathology. They produced a series of articles (Tumors of the Female Organ, Part 1, Part II and Part III), published between 1956 and 1961, which were considered the standard resource for gynecologic pathology at that time.
In 1969, she was jointly recruited by the Department of Pathology and the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at UAB. Dr. Edward E. Partridge, Director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center and Professor of Gynecologic Oncology at UAB, said that “Over the next two and one-half decades her influence on physicians in training at the University of Alabama at Birmingham was absolutely remarkable.”
According to Dr. Partridge her influence is still keenly felt by multiple pathologists, obstetrician gynecologists, and gynecologic oncologists throughout the state and the nation. He considers her “a giant among women in medicine in Alabama.”
In 2007, she was among a select few gynecological pathologists from around the world honored in the journal Pathology, by Dr. Robert H. Young, Harvard Medical School, for her influence in the development of modern gynecologic pathology.
Although state law mandated that she retire at age 70, she continued teaching, consulting and publishing as a volunteer.
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Alabama Women's Hall of Fame