Gladys Reynolds’ start in public health was, according to her, all chance. As a senior at Yankton College, Yankton, South Dakota (majoring in history and political science, math, and education), she planned to continue her education in math, history, political science, or law when the chair of the math department encouraged her to apply to graduate school in the field of statistics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, where they awarded her a National Institutes of Health (NIH) fellowship. Reynolds earned her master’s degree in statistics and was then recruited to work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). After five years as a statistician and unit chief in the Statistics Section of CDC’s Epidemiology Branch, she was recruited to join the biometry department faculty at Emory University, where she also worked toward her PhD with a major in biometry and a minor in biostatistics. After two years, Reynolds received a special NIH research fellowship, which paid her full faculty salary, books, and travel. She was the first woman without an MD or PhD to receive this fellowship. The topic of her dissertation was “A Control Model for Gonorrhea.”
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