Thérèse Bertrand-Fontaine (15 October 1895, in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

– 24 December 1987, in Paris), was a French physician and researcher.''

Who's Who in France The pronoun ''who'', in English, is an interrogative pronoun and a relative pronoun, used primarily to refer to persons. Unmarked, ''who'' is the pronoun's subjective form; its inflected forms are the objective ''whom'' and the possessive ...

- 1973-1974'', Paris, 1973, p. 242. She earned the Medal of the Resistance and held the title of Grand Officer of the

Legion of Honor The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and civil. Currently consisting of five classes, it was ...

.''

, XX^e'', Levallois-Perret, Lafitte, 2001.

Life and work

Thérèse Marcelle Bertrand was born in 1895 into an accomplished family. She was the daughter of Mathilde Mascart and geologist

Marcel Alexandre Bertrand Marcel Alexandre Bertrand (2 July 1847 – 13 February 1907) was a French geologist born in Paris. He was the son of mathematician Joseph Louis François Bertrand (1822–1900), and son-in-law to physicist Éleuthère Mascart (1837-1908). He st ...

(1847–1907), the founder of modern

tectonics Tectonics ( via Latin ) are the processes that result in the structure and properties of the Earth's crust and its evolution through time. The field of ''planetary tectonics'' extends the concept to other planets and moons. These processes ...

. Thérèse's father and two grandfathers (mathematician

Joseph Louis François Bertrand Joseph Louis François Bertrand (; 11 March 1822 – 5 April 1900) was a French mathematician whose work emphasized number theory, differential geometry, probability theory, economics and thermodynamics. Biography Joseph Bertrand was the son of ...

and physicist Éleuthère Élie Nicolas Mascart) were all members of the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...

. She married the industrialist Philippe Fontaine in 1919 and they raised two children: Martine (1920-1996) and Rémi (1923–1945).

Physician

Bertrand-Fontaine studied at the private school

Collège Sévigné The Collège Sévigné is a French non-denominational private school. The school was founded in 1880 by Mathilde Salomon, becoming the first French non-denominational high school for young women, two months before the vote of the "Camille Sée" ...

, then at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris. She was a hospital intern for four years in Paris hospitals, specializing in surgery from 1922 to 1926, and then she moved to head of clinic in 1926 before graduating to become a hospital doctor. Doing so in 1930, she became the first female doctor in Paris hospitals. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, she was head of department at Maison Dubois (currently Fernand Widal hospital). She worked for the French Resistance and was "responsible for the passive defense of the Lariboisière hospital and the neighborhood." She replaced another professor who was mobilized for the war effort and then became part of the "Steering Committee of the Medical Resistance." Her work during the war earned her the French Medal of the Resistance. After the war, Bertrand-Fontaine was named head of department at Beaujon hospital in Paris where she remained from 1945 to 1961. Bertrand-Fontaine also served as president of the Medical Society of Hospitals until 1961.

Research

Her medical research was "devoted to infectious and parasitic pathologies, hepatic and renal diseases, and in particular, nephrology, to amyloidosis."

Selected works

* ''Clinical and anatomical study of Friedländer pneumo-bacillus pneumonia'', medical thesis, Paris, Amédée Legrand, 1926. * ''Sign of Argyll-Roberston'', Poitiers, 1930 ''(with René Moreau and Raymond Garcin)''. * ''Tumor of the cervical marrow evolving under the features of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ablation, cure'', Poitiers, 1933 ''(with Raymond Garcin, D. Petit-Dutaillis and J. Laplane)''. * ''On three cases of giant cell sarcomas of the breast'', Paris, Masson, 1933 ''(with H. Hartmann and P. Guérin)''. * ''Hemophilia and hemogenesis'', sl, 1934; off-print of an extract from the ''Revue odontologique'', June 1934. * ''Ptérygium colli'', Bobigny, 1943 ''(with Marcel Fèvre)''. * ''Breast tumors'', Paris, Masson, 1951 ''(with Henri Hartmann and Paul Guérin)''. * ''The Ascending Nephrites'', Paris, Masson, 1955.

Honors

* Full member of the National Academy of Medicine, 20 May 1969, only the third woman to receive that honor. * Grand officer of the Legion of Honor. * Medal of the Resistance.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bertrand-Fontaine, Therese 1987 deaths French women physicians 20th-century French women scientists Physicians from Paris 20th-century French physicians French Resistance members Female resistance members of World War II French women activists 1895 births