Mary Lake Polan (born 1943) is an American obstetrician and gynecologist whose research on genetics and hormones involved in reproductive endocrinology, along with her fiction and non-fiction books on related subjects, helped normalize the general public's understanding of in-vitro fertilization during the 1970s through the 1990s. A Las Vegan, she grew up in the aftermath of World War II in a large Jewish family and developed an interest in medicine due to her father's work in ophthalmology. Having a varied education at several institutions growing up, along with multiple trips abroad to Europe to study, Polan eventually began doing research and teaching at Yale and Stanford. She would continue doing international trips to both learn about and spread knowledge of reproductive medicine to other countries, including Iran, China, and Eritrea. In 1988, she published a popular science mystery novel that went into detail on how in-vitro fertilization is practiced, giving insights that lessened public fears about the new technologies involved. A member of multiple professional societies and organizations, she was also made a member of multiple governmental committees and organization boards involved in women's medicine and health. She was named a "Giant in Obstetrics and Gynecology" by the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 2022 for her work.
Childhood and education
Early years Born in 1943 in Las Vegas, New Mexico to an Army ophthalmologist father from Lithuania and a nurse mother from Norway, Polan was raised during the end of World War II while her father was stationed for two years in her childhood in the Azores. Her family then moved to Huntington, West Virginia with her and her younger brother, the wilderness and escapades in the mountainous region being formative in her pre-teen and teen years. She had extensive interactions with the rest of her Jewish family that lived in the area and worked on the family business, first manufacturing bombsights during the war and then moving into optical lenses. She was sent to the private Emma Willard School in Troy, New York for her high school years. Due to her father taking her with him on his surgical duties, she obtained an early interest in medicine and became a summer ward clerk for the town's hospital at age 17.
Degrees and abroad For university, she attended Connecticut College to receive her bachelor's degree, though made several trips abroad for the learning experience. Her freshman year as a part of the "Experiment in International Living" program had her travel to Switzerland. Then, in her junior year, she went to Paris, France as a part of the Smith College Junior Year Abroad Program. She went on to graduate cum laude in the 1965 class at Connecticut College with a degree in chemistry. She continued with her studies at Yale University's School of Medicine and received a Ph.D. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry five years later in 1970. Starting a postdoctoral fellowship in the Yale lab of Joseph G. Gall, she researched how to isolate the circular components found in the mitochondrial DNA of the model organism Drosophila melanogaster.
Medicine and women's health Wanting to begin a career in medicine, she was required to obtain a medical degree, which she did in 1975 from the same school. She also did her residency at the Yale School of Medicine in it obstetrics and gynecology department, becoming the first woman to complete a residency in the department. The last several months of her residency in 1978 also saw her spend time in hospitals in Shiraz, Iran, which would later provide inspiration for her medical mystery novel. The new discoveries in infertility technologies had Polan start a reproductive endocrinology fellowship with Nathan Kase and Alan DeCherney. Later in her life, she wanted to branch out into other areas of women's health, so she enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley to get a public health degree as a part of the university's Maternal and Child Health Program. She completed the degree in 2001.
Career
Yale professorship After completing her residency and fellowship, Polan became an assistant professor and lecturer at the Yale School of Medicine until 1990, with her initial research program being funded on an NIH grant that focused on how hormone production is conducted in the granulosa-luteal cells of humans. Her fellowship time period also involved interaction with John McLean Morris, who suggested Polan get involved in the Yale-China Program that sent undergraduates as English teachers in Changsha, China. For this purpose, Polan and her family spent four months in 1986 at Changsha while teaching at the Second Affiliated Hospital. The research she was exposed to led her to start also focusing on the relationship of cytokinins and interleukin-1 to the process of reproduction. By 1987, she was promoted to an associate professor and conducted surgery at Yale New Haven Hospital in addition to doing lab research.
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