Alice S. Whittemore

Alice Segers Whittemore is an American epidemiologist and biostatistician who studies the effects of genetics and lifestyle on cancer, after an earlier career as a pure mathematician studying group theory. She works as a professor of health research and policy and of biomedical data science at Stanford University,[1] and has served as president of the International Biometric Society.[2]

Education and career

Whittemore originally studied pure mathematics. Her bachelor's degree is from Marymount Manhattan College,[2] and she completed a Ph.D. in 1967 from the City University of New York with a dissertation on Frattini subgroups supervised by Gilbert Baumslag.[3]

As a professor of mathematics at Hunter College, she became interested in epidemiology and statistics, and took a fellowship to New York University to accomplish that shift of interests, under the mentorship of Joseph Keller.[4] Keller and Whittemore married and moved together to Stanford in 1978.[2][4] There Whittemore became a professor in the Department of Health Research and Policy. She was chief of epidemiology there from 1997 to 2001, and later became co-chair of the department.[2] Keller died in 2016.[4]

Contributions

One of Whittemore's studies found a link between fertility drugs and ovarian cancer, especially strong among women who were treated with the drugs but failed to conceive.[5]

Awards and honors

In 1992, Whittemore was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.[6] She is also a fellow of the American Statistical Association, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.[2]

In 2004, she won the Janet L. Norwood Award for outstanding achievement by a woman in the statistical sciences.[2] In 2010, the Statistics in Epidemiology section of the American Statistical Association gave her their Nathan Mantel Lifetime Achievement Award.[7] She was the recipient of the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies Florence Nightingale David Award in 2005[8] and R. A. Fisher Lectureship in 2016 "for her fundamental contributions to biostatistics and epidemiology, covering a wide range of topics from environmental risk assessment to genetic linkage analysis, genetic association studies and cancer epidemiology; for bringing her statistical and mathematical insight to bear on the collection and interpretation of scientific data; for her leadership in large consortia of cancer studies; and for being a role model for many young scientists".[9]

Selected publications
  • Whittemore, A. S.; Korn, E. L. (July 1980), "Asthma and air pollution in the Los Angeles area.", American Journal of Public Health, 70 (7): 687–696, doi:10.2105/ajph.70.7.687, PMC 1619475, PMID 7386702
  • Whittemore, A. S.; Wu-Williams, A. H.; Lee, M.; Shu, Z.; Gallagher, R. P.; Deng-ao, J.; Lun, Z.; Xianghui, W.; Kun, C.; Jung, D.; Teh, C.-Z.; Chengde, L.; Yao, X. J.; Paffenbarger, R. S.; Henderson, B. E. (June 1990), "Diet, Physical Activity, and Colorectal Cancer Among Chinese in North America and China", JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 82 (11): 915–926, doi:10.1093/jnci/82.11.915, PMID 2342126.
  • Whittemore, Alice S.; Halpern, Jerry (March 1994), "A Class of Tests for Linkage Using Affected Pedigree Members", Biometrics, 50 (1): 118, doi:10.2307/2533202, JSTOR 2533202.
  • Whittemore, A. S.; Kolonel, L. N.; Wu, A. H.; John, E. M.; Gallagher, R. P.; Howe, G. R.; Burch, J. D.; Hankin, J.; Dreon, D. M.; West, D. W.; Teh, C.-Z.; Paffenbarger, R. S. (May 1995), "Prostate Cancer in Relation to Diet, Physical Activity, and Body Size in Blacks, Whites, and Asians in the United States and Canada", JNCI Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 87 (9): 652–661, doi:10.1093/jnci/87.9.652, PMID 7752270.
  • Whittemore, A. S.; Gong, G.; Itnyre, J. (March 1997), "Prevalence and contribution of BRCA1 mutations in breast cancer and ovarian cancer: results from three U.S. population-based case-control studies of ovarian cancer", The American Journal of Human Genetics, 60 (3): 496–504, PMC 1712497, PMID 9042908.
  • Manolio, Teri A.; Collins, Francis S.; Cox, Nancy J.; Goldstein, David B.; Hindorff, Lucia A.; Hunter, David J.; McCarthy, Mark I.; Ramos, Erin M.; Cardon, Lon R.; Chakravarti, Aravinda; Cho, Judy H.; Guttmacher, Alan E.; Kong, Augustine; Kruglyak, Leonid; Mardis, Elaine; Rotimi, Charles N.; Slatkin, Montgomery; Valle, David; Whittemore, Alice S.; Boehnke, Michael; Clark, Andrew G.; Eichler, Evan E.; Gibson, Greg; Haines, Jonathan L.; Mackay, Trudy F. C.; McCarroll, Steven A.; Visscher, Peter M. (October 2009), "Finding the missing heritability of complex diseases", Nature, 461 (7265): 747–753, Bibcode:2009Natur.461..747M, doi:10.1038/nature08494, PMC 2831613, PMID 19812666.
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References
  1. "Alice S Whittemore", CAP Profiles, Stanford Medicine, retrieved 2017-10-30
  2. Third Annual Janet L. Norwood Award, University of Alabama School of Public Health, retrieved 2017-10-30
  3. Alice S. Whittemore at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. Stanford Professor Emeritus Joseph Keller, an applied mathematician whose work investigated atomic explosions and oscillating ponytails, dies at 93, Stanford News Service, September 8, 2016, retrieved 2017-10-30
  5. Bouton, Katherine (April 12, 1998), "After the Ball", New York Times
  6. Elected fellows, AAAS, retrieved 2017-10-30
  7. Cheng, Jing (October 1, 2010), "Section Congratulates Award Winners", Amstat News, American Statistical Association
  8. Florence Nightingale David Award, Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies, retrieved 2018-11-04
  9. Lou, Wendy (October 1, 2016), "Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies Honors Statisticians", Amstat News, American Statistical Association, retrieved 2017-10-30
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