Slye, Maud, 1879-1954

Maud Slye was born in Minneapolis in 1869. Many published sources give her birth date as February 8, 1879, but U.S. Census records indicate that she was born in 1869; it may be that claimed the later birth date to avoid mandatory retirement. In 1895, Slye entered the University of Chicago as an undergraduate student and worked as secretary for President William Rainey Harper to support herself. Following a breakdown brought on by the strain of full-time work and study, Slye relocated to the East Coast and received her A.B. degree from Brown University in 1899. She taught at Rhode Island State Normal School until 1905, and in 1908 returned to the University of Chicago as a graduate assistant to Professor Charles Otis Whitman.

Slye began her pioneering research on cancer heredity in mice soon after her arrival in Chicago, and in 1911 joined the University’s newly opened Sprague Memorial Institute. In 1919 she was appointed director of the Cancer Laboratory at the University of Chicago, and in 1926 was promoted to associate professor of pathology, a position she held until her retirement in 1944. Slye performed her research with only minimal financial support from the University, often paying for mouse food and other supplies out of her personal stipend. Her first research assistant, Harriet Holmes, worked without pay.

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