Mary Fenner Dallman facts for kids

Mary Fenner Dallman (born April 11, 1935 – died December 21, 2021) was an American scientist. She studied how the brain and hormones work together. This field is called neuroendocrinology.

Mary Dallman was a professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She was the very first woman to get a permanent teaching job in the Physiology Department there. She worked at UCSF for 38 years before she retired in 2007.

She is famous for helping us understand the body's special system for handling stress. This system is called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, or HPA axis. She also discovered that eating "comfort foods" can help calm down your body's reaction to stress.

Her Life

Mary Dallman had three children with her husband, Peter Dallman. Peter was also a professor at UCSF, studying children's medicine.

Her Career

Mary Dallman first earned her bachelor's degree in Chemistry from Smith College in 1956. Later, she completed her Ph.D. in Physiology at Stanford University in 1967.

After her Ph.D., she did more advanced training. First, she studied neuroscience in Stockholm, Sweden. Then, she came to UCSF to study neuroendocrinology. She stayed at UCSF and started her own research lab in 1972. She became a full professor and was even a vice chair of her department for 14 years.

She retired in 2007 and became a professor emerita. This means she kept her title after retiring. She was a pioneer as the first woman to hold a permanent faculty position in the Physiology Department at UCSF.

Understanding the Stress System

Mary Dallman is well-known for her work on the HPA axis. This is your body's main system for reacting to stress. Her research helped explain how this system works.

She also made an interesting discovery about comfort foods. She found that these foods can help reduce the body's stress response.

Her lab also looked at how certain hormones, called glucocorticoids, affect the HPA axis. They found that these hormones can quickly tell the stress system to slow down.

Body Weight and Stress

Her team also discovered a strong connection between body weight, body fat, and how active the HPA axis is. They found that eating certain fatty foods could actually help calm down the body's stress response. This was a big step in understanding how food affects our stress levels.

Recognition and Awards

Mary Dallman received many honors for her important work:

• In 1996, she became the President of the International Society of Neuroendocrinology.
• She served on the editorial boards for several important science journals. These included Endocrinology and J. Neuroscience.
• In 2003, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the ISPNE.
• She gave many special lectures, including the Muldoon Memorial Lectureship in 2006.
• In 2010, she received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior.
• In 2015, she gave a special Kavli Foundation Lecture to the Society for Neuroscience.