Moore, Dorothea

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, on May 13, 1894, Dorothea May Moore was the eldest of the three children of Edward Caldwell Moore and Eliza Coe (Brown) Moore. At the time of DMM's birth, ECM was minister of the First Congregational Church; in 1902 he was appointed a professor at Harvard University in history, philosophy, and theology. ECBM was a talented pianist who had studied in Vienna with Leschetitzky. Both of DMM's parents were fluent in several European languages, and German was for a time spoken at home.

DMM attended the Gilman School in Cambridge and graduated from the Misses May's School in Boston in 1911. She earned an A.B. cum laude in history, economics, and politics from Bryn Mawr College in 1915. At the end of her sophmore year, she had first considered medical work as her focus. There was debate as to nursing training, but by her senior year, with her family's approval, the decision was clear, and DMM shifted her college course work towards preparation for medical school. This was continued by attending Radcliffe Graduate School (1915-1916) and taking graduate courses at Harvard Medical School (1916-1917). She spent 1917-1918 in France working as a bacteriologist and technician in an American Red Cross Hospital, and then attended Johns Hopkins Medical School, where she was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha and in 1922 received her M.D.

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