First Female Biochemistry PhD Supports Department
The first woman to receive a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has bequeathed $1,000 to the Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology.
Noranna Burridge Warner had earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at UT in 1968 before continuing her studies in biochemistry under Professor Kenneth Monty, who founded the department just a few years earlier and was its first chair. After earning her doctorate in 1971, she completed medical school at the UT Health Science Center in Memphis in 1975.
Warner served her internship and residency in Memphis. After a post-doctoral fellowship at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California, she joined the faculty of the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Texas. Shortly after her retirement, the Dr. Noranna B. Warner Endowed Chair was established at what is now the McGovern Medical School
Warner died after a brief illness in 2023.
By Amy Beth Miller