Irena Koprowska

Irena Koprowska, née Grasberg was a Polish-born pathologist in the United States. In 1985, she won the Papanikolaou Award.
She was the first woman to be named a full professor at Hahnemann Medical College, now Drexel University College of Medicine.

Life

Koprowska was born in 1917 to Eugenia and Henryk Grasberg, the latter of which owned a flour mill in Warsaw, Poland. Growing up, she did not identify as Jewish or Catholic, but instead as atheist.
She graduated from Warsaw University Medical School, in 1939. Around this time, Grasberg married Hilary Koprowski, a virologist who discovered the first effective oral polio vaccine. But she and Hilary, a Jewish man, were forced to flee Poland as the Nazi army began its invasion of Warsaw.
She worked as a pathologist in Rio de Janeiro. She studied with Georgios Papanikolaou, at Cornell University Medical College. From 1970 to 1987, she was a professor at Temple University School of Medicine.
Koprowska was mentored by Dr. Georgios Papanikolaou the inventor of the "Pap smear", and went on to become a leader in the field of cytopathology. Dr. Koprowska was a founding member of the Inter Society Council of Cytology, which became the American Society of Cytopathology. Additionally, she co-authored, with Dr. George Papanicolaou, a case report of the earliest diagnosis of lung cancer by a sputum smear.
Grasberg married Hilary Koprowski, a virologist who discovered the first effective oral polio vaccine.