Ruth Rice Puffer
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Ruth Rice Puffer | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 31, 1907 Berlin, Massachusetts, |
| Died | September 2, 2002 (aged 95) |
| Alma mater | Harvard School of Public Health Smith College |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Biostatistics |
| Institutions | Pan American Health Organization |
Ruth Rice Puffer (August 31, 1907 – September 2, 2002) was an American biostatistician who headed the Department of Health Statistics of the Pan American Health Organization, where she led the Inter-American Investigation of Childhood Mortality.[1][2][3][4][5]
Puffer was born in Berlin, Massachusetts, and went to Hudson High School (Massachusetts).[1] She graduated from Smith College in 1929, began working with Edgar Bright Wilson in the Harvard School of Public Health, and in 1933 moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to become director of statistics in the Tennessee Department of Public Health. After additional graduate study with Wade Hampton Frost at Johns Hopkins University, she returned to Harvard and obtained a doctorate in public health (unusually, without also having completed an M.D.) in 1943.[1][2] She published her dissertation research on tuberculosis[2] as a book through the Harvard University Press.
After completing her doctorate, Puffer returned to Tennessee, but her interest in international health statistics was sparked by a 1946 lecture tour in Chile, and a return visit there in 1950.[2] From 1953 to 1970, she worked with the Pan American Health Organization.[1][2][3] During her time at the PAHO, she headed two investigations into Pan American childhood mortality-- this work continued as she was hired by the organization as a contractor in 1971.[6] Since that time, she continued to work as a consultant, including trips to India, Thailand, and Indonesia.[2] She moved to Corvallis, Oregon in 1982, and to McMinnville, Oregon, where she died, in 2002.[1]
