Esther Penrose

Women in Science » Medicine

First LDS woman doctor to receive a degree in medicine. In 1873, Penrose was married and a mother of four children when Brigham Young pled from the pulpit for more women to study medicine. Penrose heeded the call, leaving her family to attend medical school in New York and later Philadelphia. She excelled in school and specialized in ear and eye –- one of the first such specialists in the nation. Penrose returned to Utah four years later, where she practiced medicine for the next thirty-five years.