Renee C. Fox (1928–2020)

Renée C. Fox was born to a Jewish-American family in New York City. She graduated from 8th grade at the age of 12 and attended Julia Richman High School, graduating at age 16. She then enrolled in Smith College in Massachusetts and graduated summa cum laude in 1949. She earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Radcliffe College in 1954. Renée’s major teaching and research interests became the sociology of medicine, medical research, medical education, and medical ethics. She took part in observation-based field studies in Europe, Central Africa (especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and in China, as well as in the USA. She became a renowned medical sociologist and bioethicist. She lectured in colleges, universities, and medical schools in the USA and taught in a number of universities abroad. At the University of Pennsylvania, she held joint appointments in the Departments of Psychiatry and Medicine, and in the School of Nursing, and an interdisciplinary chair as the Annenberg Professor of the Social Sciences. In 1992, she decided to study Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF or Doctors Without Borders) and the dilemmas the organization and its members and staff face while delivering medical care, bearing witness to violence, and advocacy. She was an elected member of numerous scientific organizations, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She received the American Sociological Association’s Leo G. Reeder Award for Distinguished Contributions to Medical Sociology as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. In 1995, the Belgian Government named her Chevalier of the Order of Leopold II. Her many acclaimed books examined such topics as attitude formation among medical students, training for uncertainty, organ transplants, and bioethics.