Anne L. Davis '45

Alumnae Achievement Awards 1992

Physician

Dr. Anne Davis Wichern, a specialist in pulmonary diseases, graduated from Wellesley College in 1945 and received her M.D. from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1949. In 1968, she was offered an associate professorship at the New York University of Medicine, where she continued to teach until December 2002. Dr. Davis also served as the president of the American Lung Association and the American Thoracic Society, and founded the first emphysema clinic in the United States.

Her interest in chest and pediatric pulmonary medicine developed after she recovered from tuberculosis, which she had contracted during her internship at the Bellevue Hospital Center in New York in the 1950s. She founded the emphysema unit at Bellevue in 1956 and remained the director until it merged with the hospital’s chest and asthma units in 2001. Dr. Davis was a leader in pulmonary care and the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. She served on international and governmental advisory committees focused on pulmonary health issues, and she lectured and wrote extensively on these subjects.

Dr. Anne Davis’s contributions to her field have helped shape public policy and have greatly influenced medical knowledge and understanding of lung diseases. She died in New York in March 2003.