Reiss, Louise Z. , 1920-

Louise Zibold Reiss (b. 1920) was educated at Skidmore College and University of Pennsylvania. She received in 1940 an invitation to enter medical school without a degree from the Women's Medical College (M.D. 1945). She served her internship and residency at Philadelphia General Hospital. In 1954, she and her husband, Eric Reiss, came to St. Louis when he chose Washington University in St. Louis for his medical residency. She was working as an internist and for the St. Louis Health Department when she volunteered to stuff envelopes for the St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey. Barry Commoner asked her to coordinate the survey from the outset in December 1958 instead, and she served as vice president and project director from 1959-1961. In time over 50,000 teeth were collected and prepared for study by Harold L. Rosenthal of the Washington University dental school. The bones she harvested from still-born births provided bone-tooth comparisons. Barry Commoner persuaded the Consumer's Union to fund the strontium-90 analysis and her article on the survey was the lead article in Science (11/24/61, Vol. 134) Sources: Louise Z. Reiss memoir, 2004; American Medical Directory, 1961; Louis Z. Reiss biography, Missouri Women in the Health Sciences http://beckerexhibits.wustl.edu/mowihsp/bios/reiss.htm

From the description of Louise Z. Reiss memoir, 2004 2004 (Washington University in St. Louis). WorldCat record id: 224041273