Margaret Marsh, University Professor of History, Rutgers-Camden, and Core Member, Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, is recognized for her distinguished contributions to the field of social sciences, particularly the history of medicine, academic leadership and communicating and interpreting science to the public.
Dr. Marsh is recognized among twelve other Rutgers faculty members. Rutgers’ AAAS fellows are among 564 scientists, engineers and innovators spanning 24 scientific disciplines who are being recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements.
Excerpt from press release:
Margaret Marsh, a historian of medicine who specializes in issues of gender, has been chronicling the history of infertility, reproductive medicine and technology for three decades.
In collaboration with her sister, Wanda Ronner, a professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, her recent book, The Pursuit of Parenthood: From Test-Tube Babies to Uterus Transplants, is a history of contemporary assisted reproductive technology – providing insight into the experiences of the scientists and physicians who developed and employed these new technologies and the women and men who used them.
Marsh and Ronner are also the authors of two other books that explore the history of infertility and reproductive medicine. This work reveals the inequities in access to treatment by race and class and probes the ethical questions that medical scientists, practitioners and patients must ask and answer.
As dean of Rutgers-Camden’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School and during her first time serving as interim chancellor, Marsh was the driving force behind the creation of Ph.D. programs at Rutgers-Camden, including in computational and integrative biology. She promotes programs encouraging underrepresented students to prepare for careers in medicine and teaches the evolution of medicine in all its complexities to Rutgers-Camden Honor College students, many of them preparing for careers in medicine, nursing and science.
Marsh believes that science literacy is important and said what makes her most proud is the opportunities her work has given her “to bring such an important history, with its vast social, cultural and public policy implications, to the public, and my impact in administrative leadership, where I have been able to promote research and graduate training, as well as access to scientific careers for undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds on the Camden campus.’’