Marjorie LeMay; radiologist cast light on mysteries of brain

MARJORIE LEMAY

In 1946 and 1947, when Babe Ruth was battling throat cancer, his doctors called in neuroradiologist Marjorie LeMay, then at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, to give the baseball great radiation therapy after his surgery.

In the 1980s, while Dr. LeMay was teaching at Harvard Medical School, she was called to Washington as a defense witness in the trial of John W. Hinckley Jr., whose lawyers argued that he was legally insane at the time he shot President Reagan. Dr. LeMay testified that CAT scan pictures of Hinckley's brain "suggest that [he had] organic brain disease," according to a 1982 New York Times story.

Dr. LeMay, who was a pioneering neuroradiologist before and into the era of computed tomography of the brain and one of the few female radiologists of her generation, died Nov. 27 of pneumonia at her Cambridge home. She was 91.

Decades before CAT scans became a medical staple, Dr. LeMay graduated from the University of Kansas Medical School in 1942. Her knowledge of the anatomy of the brain was so phenomenal, colleagues said, it could match the challenge of many technological advances.

"In my opinion, Dr. LeMay was the foremost anatomist of the brain of the last century and knew more about neuroradiology than anyone over the last 100 years," said Dr. Daniel Kido, chief of neuroradiology at Loma Linda University in California, who worked with Dr. LeMay in Boston and wrote scientific papers with her.

One of "her best discoveries," he said, was that a certain shape of the skull was related to left- or right-handedness. Another of her observations was important to the understanding of Alzheimer's disease.

"Marjorie was a pioneer in the area of brain research that is now called morphorometry," said her son-in-law, Dr. Kent Yucel, chairman of radiology at Tufts Medical Center and Tufts Medical School. "That is the study of brain shape and size as it relates to human brain function and disease."

"Many of her research papers traced the origins of the shape of the human brain through careful dissection and photography of primate brains," said her daughter, Dr. Tamsin Ann Knox of Dedham, a gastroenterologist.

In an e-mail from Italy, Dr. Mario Savoiardo, professor of radiology at Carlo Besta National Neurological Institute in Naples, recalled working with Dr. LeMay at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Jamaica Plain, in a department headed by Dr. Norman Geschwind, who left a legacy in behavioral neurology.

Savoiardo said Dr. LeMay's research benefitted mankind. "In the 1960s," he wrote, "she published an excellent work on the angiographic aspect of the anterior choroidal artery and its value in diagnosing intracranial lesions."

During the same years, he said, she wrote research papers on the differentiation of several degenerative disorders that "at the time, could only be diagnosed at autopsy."

However, there was much more to Dr. LeMay than her scientific accomplishments. Her travels through Ethiopia and to all the continents except for Antarctica, often on scientific and medical missions, were a big part of her life.

Then, there were the gatherings at her Cambridge home. "Marjorie had one of the last great salons in Cambridge," with a wide mixture of guests of various intellects, said Dr. Fred Hochberg, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, who attended many of them. Many of the guests were big names in the foundation of modern neurology.

"From my perspective, Marjorie was the catalyst for interactions between these people," Hochberg said.

Marjorie Jeannette LeMay was born during the Great Depression in Baldwin, Kan. Her daughter said she got her driver's license at 14 "so she could drive a tractor on a local farm during high school." She graduated from the University of Kansas Medical School in 1942, "the only woman in her class," said Ephraim Isaac, the first professor of African-American studies at Harvard and a longtime friend.

At the time, her daughter said, the University of Kansas did not permit women to do internships, so Marjorie LeMay moved to New York to train in radiology at Presbyterian Hospital and then joined the radiology department at Columbia University.

Dr. LeMay moved to Boston in 1950 with her husband, Dr. Walter Eugene Knox III. During a year's sabbatical, both taught at the University of Beirut. The couple divorced in 1964. Dr. Knox died in 1982.

From the 1950s to the 1970s, Dr. LeMay worked at hospitals affiliated with Boston, Tufts, and Harvard universities. After she left the hospitals, she worked at Harvard University Health Service and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

She traveled extensively, working in a hospital in the jungle of Papua New Guinea and making an archeological visit to Borneo. She also traveled to the Middle East and became interested in biblical and Middle Eastern archeology, mythology, and anthropology.

"Mother was fascinated by Ethiopian history and culture," Knox said.

With Isaac, Dr. LeMay wrote the book, "The Ethiopian Church."

She also became friends with Stephen Jay Gould, the noted Harvard paleontologist and scholar who died in 2002.

Dr. LeMay was a renaissance woman, as her many friends described her, and was a consummate homemaker.

"She could sew beautifully, but always tied her thread with one-handed surgical knots," he daughter said. "She was equally at home cleaning gutters, carving block prints of Buddhas, and reading CAT scans. Her particular joy was playing the piano. Her soft music would be heard throughout the house in the late evening."

In addition to her daughter, Dr. LeMay leaves a son, Eugene Knox IV of Bainbridge Island, Wash.; another daughter, Phebe Lee Intihar of Joppa, Md.; and three grandchildren.

A memorial service is planned for May.