Nationality American | Name Rose Frisch | |
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Fields Women's health, women's biology, leptin, obesity, fat, infertility, public health, population health, biology Institutions Known for discovery of leptin; work in infertility, specifically her discovery that low body fat was a contributing factor to infertility Died January 30, 2015, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States Books Female Fertility and the Body Fat Connection | ||
Rose Epstein Frisch (7 July 1918 – 30 January 2015) was an American biologist whose work was instrumental in the discovery of leptin. She is mainly known for her work in infertility; specifically the discovery that low body fat was a contributing factor to infertility.
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Early life and education
She was born Rose Epstein in 1918, in the Bronx, to Russian immigrants Louis and Stella Epstein. Frisch attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in 1939. She earned her master's degree in zoology the following year at Columbia University, and her Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Wisconsin in 1943.
Research
Focusing on the role of adipose tissue (fat) in fertility, Frisch discovered that low body fat (under 17%) could cause infertility, late menarche, and oligomenorrhea. She also discovered that athletes were at lower risk of breast cancer.
Frisch began her research career as a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin, where she worked with Drosophila melanogaster. After her doctorate, she became a human computer for the Manhattan Project.
Until she passed, she was involved with the Cambridge-based Center for Population and Development Studies of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Legacy
Frisch was widely respected by athletic women, who were often able to achieve a pregnancy in part by applying knowledge gathered from her research.