Spurrier, Wilma, 1928-1989.

Wilma Spurrier was born in Denver, Colorado, on December 26, 1928. She studied Chemistry at Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Illinois, before graduating in 1950 from an eighteen-month course in Medical Technology at the School of Medical Technology at Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago. After passing the National Board Examination by the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (ASCP) she became a registered Medical Technologist. During the 1950s Spurrier worked in the hematology laboratories of Mount Sinai and the Hektoen Institute. From 1961 to 1969 she worked on the chemical characterization of burn toxins in the Department of Preventive medicine at the University of Illinois Medical School. In 1967 Spurrier started part-time work on hibernation research with Dr. A. R. Dawe in the Department of Physiology at Loyola University Chicago's Stritch School of Medicine, becoming a full-time research associate in 1969. In 1978 she accepted a position in the Department of Neurosurgery. With Dr. Dawe, Spurrier pioneered research in hibernation, isolating and naming the "hibernation induction trigger", the unknown blood substance that causes hibernation. Wilma Spurrier passed away February 5, 1989.