Jocelyn Spragg, lecturer in medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, died on November 2. She was 70.
Spragg was raised in Rochester, NY. She received her bachelor’s degree from Smith College and moved to Boston in 1962 to pursue her PhD. She received a master’s degree in pharmacology and a PhD in bacteriology and immunology from Harvard University in 1969. Spragg completed a postdoctoral fellowship in medicine at BWH. She would remain affiliated with BWH throughout the years and enjoyed a highly successful first career as a research scientist making seminal discoveries about the kallikrein-kinin system. She served as instructor in medicine, assistant professor of medicine (immunology) and associate professor of medicine (immunology).
Spragg’s interest in formal teaching and program innovation began when she stepped in as an instructor for the Radcliffe Summer Program in Science. Committed to increasing the number of women in science and medicine, she helped develop a curriculum to expose young women in high school to the sciences and to expose them to women in leadership roles.
As her interest in developing programs for minority students grew, she pursued a Master of Education from Boston University, majoring in counseling psychology, and graduated in 1992. She served first as faculty coordinator (1991–1998) and then as faculty director (1998–2010) of diversity programs and special academic resources in the Division of Medical Sciences at Harvard Medical School. Encouraged by her longtime mentor and friend, Harold Amos, she developed one of the premier summer research programs in the country, the Summer Honors Undergraduate Research Program. Through this program, she provided research opportunities to hundreds of minority students and students from small schools.
She went on to develop a national reputation for her leadership, expertise and commitment in this area, and in 2009 was awarded Harvard Medical School’s Harold Amos Faculty Diversity Award in recognition of her accomplishments.
Spragg is survived by her brother, Roger Spragg and family, and by the hundreds of students and colleagues whom she mentored.
Contributions in memory of Spragg and in support of underrepresented minority students may be made to Harvard University with a memo line stating, “In Remembrance of Jocelyn Spragg,” and sent to Beth Thompson, Assistant Dean, Development Services, Harvard University FAS Development Office, 124 Mt. Auburn St., 3rd Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138.
Charles Barlow, the Bronson Crothers Professor Emeritus of Neurology at Children’s Hospital Boston, died on Dec. 11. He was 87.
Born in Mason City, Iowa, Barlow studied premed at Coe College in Cedar Rapids until the Navy recruited him to enroll in an accelerated educational track. After two years at Coe, he transferred to Williams College for six months and then to the University of Chicago. He earned his bachelor’s degree in anatomy in 1945 and received his medical degree in 1947, at age 23.
Barlow spent the next two years interning in pediatrics, first at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and then at Children’s Hospital Boston.
Following his internships, Barlow enlisted in the Navy. He served as a medical officer on a ship in the Pacific and was also stationed at various US naval hospitals during the Korean War.
After he got out of the Navy in 1951, Barlow began a residency in neurology at the University of Chicago. There, he found himself on the cutting edge of the emerging field of pediatric neurology. After three years in residency, he took a position as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and was named an associate professor in 1960. During this time, he began his groundbreaking research into the blood-brain barrier of the central nervous system, and tracing the movement of blood, chemicals, and other fluids through the brain.
In 1963, Barlow was recruited by HMS to assume the Bronson Crothers professorship in neurology. He was also named neurologist in chief at Children’s. He was one of the youngest doctors to accept the position.
Barlow’s tenure at HMS, he established the Harvard-Longwood neurology program, one of the few training programs in pediatric neurology at the time and the only one to include both adult and pediatric neurology. He also established the first research program in pediatric neurology at Children’s when he founded the hospital’s mental retardation research program, which he directed for 20 years.
He retired in 1990 but continued to teach when he could.
Barlow leaves two daughters, Margaret, of Cohasset and Ellen, of Easton; a brother, Billie Boswell, of Marshalltown, Iowa, and a sister, Joanne Pierce, of Houlton, Wis.; and two grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his wife, Patricia, who died in 1998, and his son, John, who died in 1990.
