Biography

Gertrude Van Wagenen was born on November 28, 1893 to Gertrude and Anthony Van Wagenen. Gertrude has one brother, Anthony “Tony” Van Wagenen. Van Wagenen graduated from the State University of Iowa, now University of Iowa, in 1913 where she was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma. In 1919 she received her PhD in Zoology also from the State University of Iowa, today the University of Iowa. While working on her PhD, she went on many research trips including a Barbados-Antigua Expedition in 1918. Van Wagenen went on to teach and conduct research at Yale University where she started a Rhesus monkey colony lab. Her research led to the discovery of “the morning after pill.” She married Crawford Fairbanks Failey – in 1924 and divorced him in 1935--. Gertrude Van Wagenen died in 1978.

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