Sonja Eva Singletary (December 23, 1952 – July 29, 2015) was an American surgeon who specialized in the care of breast cancer. She was a faculty member at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and a past president of the

Society of Surgical Oncology A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societi ...

Biography

Singletary was born near

Florence, South Carolina Florence is a city in and the county seat of Florence County, South Carolina, United States. It lies at the intersection of Interstates 20 and 95 and is the eastern terminus of the former. It is the primary city within the Florence metropolit ...

, to Joe and Agnes Singletary. Her father had met her mother, a native of Estonia, in Germany during World War II. Singletary grew up on a farm and later attended Clemson University, graduating in two years with a perfect grade point average. She earned a medical degree from the

Medical University of South Carolina The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) is a public medical school in South Carolina. It opened in 1824 in Charleston as a small private college aimed at training physicians and has since established hospitals and medical facilities acr ...

. After training in general surgery at the University of Florida College of Medicine, Singletary completed a fellowship in

surgical oncology Surgical oncology is the branch of surgery applied to oncology; it focuses on the surgical management of tumors, especially cancerous tumors. As one of several modalities in the management of cancer, the specialty of surgical oncology has evolved ...

at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Singletary stayed at MD Anderson as a faculty member, later serving as chief of the melanoma surgery and breast surgery sections. Her interest in breast cancer was influenced by MD Anderson radiation oncologist

Eleanor Montague Eleanor D. Montague (February 11, 1926 – November 9, 2018) was an American radiologist and educator who established breast-conserving therapy in the United States and improved radiation therapy techniques. She became a member of the Texas Wo ...

. In 1992, the

President's Cancer Panel The President's Cancer Panel is a three-person panel that reports to the President of the United States on the development and execution of the National Cancer Program. Members serve 3-year terms, and at least two of the three panel members must ...

appointed her to a special committee that examined the state of breast cancer treatment and research. Singletary created patient education materials, including the DVD ''Moving Beyond Breast Cancer''. For more than ten years, Singletary was the editor-in-chief of ''Breast Diseases: A Yearbook Quarterly''. She was a section editor of the '' Annals of Surgical Oncology''. In 1996, she was inducted into the Texas Women's Hall of Fame. In 2002, Singletary received a Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Medical University of South Carolina. She was the 2004–05 president of the Society of Surgical Oncology, and she was the first woman to hold that post. She died in Houston in 2015.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Singletart, S. Eva 1952 births 2015 deaths American surgeons University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center faculty Medical University of South Carolina alumni Clemson University alumni Women surgeons