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Langmuir, Leona Baumgartner Elias (1902-1991)
Date of Birth: 1902 August 19, Illinois
Date of Death: 1991 January 15, Massachusetts
Obituary:
From Find A Grave
A memorial service for Dr. Leona Baumgartner Langmuir, a former health commissioner of New York City, will be at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at the Federated Church in Edgartown with the Rev. John E. Wallace officiating.
Mrs. Langmuir, 88, died Jan. 16 in Chilmark, Mass., of polycythemia, a blood ailment. She was cremated.
She was born Aug. 18, 1902, in Chicago and raised in Lawrence, Kan. Her father, William J. Baumgartner, was a zoology professor at Kansas University and a member of the faculty from 1904 to 1945.
She received two degrees from KU, an A.B. degree in 1923 and a master's in 1925. She was a Rockefeller Research Fellow at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Munich before earning a Sterling Fellowship at Yale, where she received a doctorate in immunology and an M.D. from the Yale Medical School.
Dr. Langmuir was nationally known for her work as New York City's first woman commissioner of health from 1954 to 1962. Life magazine profiled her in 1957 with a story titled, "An Energetic Lady Doctor to Eight Million People." She was described in the article as an "outspoken woman with an apparently unlimited store of energy" who raced about the city on inspection tours in restaurant kitchens, slaughterhouses and day-nursery bathrooms.
In 1962 she was appointed by President Kennedy to lead the Office of Technical Cooperation and Research at the Agency for International Development, making her the highest-ranking woman in the U.S. government at the time. She also was a visiting professor of social medicine at the Harvard Medical School from 1966 to 1972.
Among her many honors was the Distinguished Service Citation from the KU Alumni Association in 1947.
She married Nathaniel M. Elias in 1943. He died in 1964. She married Alexander D. Langmuir on June 27, 1970. He survives.
Friday, January 25, 1991 ljworld
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1991-01-20-9101060512-story.html:
Dr. Leona Baumgartner Langmuir, Chicago-born public health official who was New York City`s commissioner of health from 1954 to 1962 and later was an assistant administrator of the Agency for International Development, died Tuesday in Chilmark, Mass. She was 88.
She died of polycythemia, a blood ailment, said her husband, Dr. Alexander D. Langmuir.
Dr. Baumgartner, as she was known during her career, joined the Department of Health in 1937 and rose to become its first female commissioner.
Characteristically, she shrugged off the distinction, as she did again in 1962 when President John F. Kennedy appointed her to head the Office of Technical Cooperation and Research at AID, making her the highest-ranking woman in the U.S. government at the time.
In 1966 Dr. Baumgartner was named visiting professor of social medicine at the Harvard Medical School, a post she held until she retired in 1972.
In the national and international health arena, while serving with the Agency for International Development, she established a Research Advisory Council to improve standards of professional quality in grants for health and welfare programs around the globe.
She was credited with persuading President Lyndon Johnson to reverse a policy that had prevented the agency from including birth control in its support of health programs in underdeveloped countries.
Although born in Chicago, she was raised in Lawrence, Kan., where her father taught zoology at the University of Kansas.
For several years, she gave a health education message to a nationwide television audience on a morning program hosted by Arlene Francis.
Dr. Baumgartner`s first husband, Nathaniel M. Elias, a chemical engineeer, died in 1964. In 1970 she married Langmuir, an epidemiologist, who survives.
MLA Personal Photos Collection
Biographical note:
Daughter of William (Wilhelm) J. and Olga E. (Leisy) Baumgartner
Married Nathaniel Elias 1942(d. 1964)
Married Dr. Alexander D. Langmuir 1970
New York City's Commissioner of Health 1954-1962
1962, Appointed by President John F. Kennedy to head the Office of Technical Cooperation and Research at A.I.D.
Bethel alumni note:
Photo holdings:
See William Jacob Baumgartner for family photos
Sources:
Grandma Online profile 815349
Find A Grave 21902755
Obituary, Chicago Tribune, see link above
