Sarah Donaldson
{{Short description|American pediatric radiation oncologist}}
Sarah S. Donaldson (born 1939) is an American pediatric radiation oncologist and professor at Stanford University.
Education
Donaldson was born in Portland, Oregon, on April 20, 1939, where she attended Grant High School and graduated in 1956. She completed a five-year degree in nursing at the University of Oregon in 1961, after which she worked for William S. Fletcher, a surgical oncologist, for several years as his assistant. Fletcher encouraged her to study medicine, and in 1968 she graduated from Harvard Medical School, after spending her pre-clinical years at Dartmouth Medical School.{{cite web|url=https://www.astro.org/about-astro/history/history-interviews/sarah-donaldson|title=Sarah Donaldson, MD, FASTRO|date=September 28, 2008|first1=David|last1=Larson|first2=Thoedore|last2=Phillips|publisher=American Society for Radiation Oncology|accessdate=February 14, 2025}}{{cite journal|url=https://www.clinicalimaging.org/article/S0899-7071(20)30457-5/fulltext|title=Sarah Donaldson: Blasting cells & blazing trails|first1=Jolie|last1=Jean|first2=Elizabeth Kagan|last2=Arleo|journal=Clinical Imaging|volume=72|pages=120-121|year=2021|accessdate=February 14, 2025}}
Career
Donaldson decided to pursue radiation oncology, a field to which she had some exposure when working with Fletcher, as his patients sometimes had neoadjuvant radiotherapy before he operated on them. She completed a residency in radiation oncology at the Stanford University School of Medicine in 1973.{{cite web|url=https://www.rsna.org/news/2018/november-december/meeting-experience/donaldson-2018|title=RSNA 2018 Gold Medal, Sarah S. Donaldson, MD|publisher=Radiological Society of North America|accessdate=February 14, 2025}} During that time, she was mentored by Henry Kaplan, and when she expressed an interest in pediatric radiation oncology, which was not yet an established specialty, Kaplan encouraged her to travel to France to complete a one-year fellowship at Institut Gustave Roussy. Upon her return to Stanford, she became an assistant professor in radiation therapy in 1973, later becoming a full professor in Stanford's Department of Radiation Oncology.{{cite journal|doi=10.1148/radiol.12124057|title=Sarah S. Donaldson, MD, President, Radiological Society of North America, 2013|first=Richard T.|last=Hoppe|year=2013|volume=266|issue=1|journal=Radiology}} She helped to establish a pediatric oncology program at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, and she was the director of Stanford's residency program in radiation oncology from 2001 to 2009.
Donaldson has served as president of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (1991), the American Board of Radiology (1996), and the Radiological Society of North America (2012). She received the American College of Radiology's Gold Medal, the American Society for Radiation Oncology's Gold Medal, the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal, the American Radium Society's Janeway Medal, and the American Association for Women in Radiology's Marie Curie Award. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine.
References
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Category:American women oncologists
Category:Members of the National Academy of Medicine
Category:Grant High School (Portland, Oregon) alumni
Category:Harvard Medical School alumni