Rosenfeld, Irene.

Biographical notes:

Dr. Irene Rosenfeld (1908-1983) was an experimental pathologist at the University of Wyoming for 25 years. She did extensive research on the element selenium and its effects on mammals, birds and humans. She authored over sixty publications and co-authored, with Orville A. Beath, the book "Selenium" in 1964.

Irene Rosenfeld was born in Austria in 1908. She came to the United States in 1920 and became a naturalized citizen in 1921. Her higher education included a B.A. 1935, M.S. 1936, Ph.D. 1942 from Ohio State University in the fields of biochemistry, bacteriology and experimental pathology. She worked as an instructor in pathology at O.S.U. 1941-1942 and came to the University of Wyoming as an assistant professor-research pathology in 1942. She worked as a researcher though other job titles held during her career were agricultural biochemist and associate pharmacologist. She had a sabbatical year as an atomic energy fellow at the University of California-Berkeley, Donner Laboratory, 1948-1949, and was visiting scientist in cancer research at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, 1956-1957.

She became a full professor at the University of Wyoming, later professor emeritus upon her retirement in 1967. After twenty-five years in Wyoming she returned to Ohio to work as a research consultant and died there in 1983.

Dr. Rosenfeld was a major researcher in the University of Wyoming Biochemistry Department where she received much grant funding to study, among other things, the application of radioactive substances to medicine and biological science; selenium poisoning in soils, plants and animals; protein metabolism and synthesis.

Professor Rosenfeld was the author of over sixty publications including the book Selenium (coauthor, O.A. Beath), 1964, a study of the geobotany, biochemistry, toxicity and nutrition involved with the element (Selenium) as it affects humans, mammals and birds.

From the guide to the Irene Rosenfeld papers, 1906-1968, (University of Wyoming. American Heritage Center.)