Katherine "Kitty" Halloran, MD '54, was one of just three female members of her Yale School of Medicine graduating class, and she later returned to the medical school for 20 years as a research physician and assistant professor. She has died at age 90.
Halloran was born in North Haven, Conn., on August 14, 1929, and was a 1951 graduate of Wellesley College. Following medical school, she did a residency at Bellevue Hospital in New York, and then held the Meyer Berger research fellowship in cardiovascular disease at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. She then returned to Yale School of Medicine where she spent twenty years as a research physician and assistant professor—conducting medical research, attending to patients, and teaching medical students. Halloran authored research in pediatric cardiology before pursuing the then-nascent field of genetics, including peer-reviewed publications on the genetic origins of Down syndrome. She later moved to Lexington, Mass., to become the regional flight surgeon for the Federal Aviation Administration.
She died October 18 after a brief illness.