Shirley Siew, the doctor who flew to great heights

Dr Shirley Siew was trailblazer in everything she did, especially in medicine and aviation. She was known for her academic excellence and enquiring mind, and won more than 70 medical awards in her lifetime.

She was 97 when she passed away on 16 June after a short illness, having retired only in November 2021.

She believed that she had to work twice as hard as men to get anywhere, according to her niece, Elana Siew. Even so, she received two gold medals from the American Medical Association and became the second registered female pilot in South Africa. Yet, she never spoke of her achievements, according to her niece. Her family didn’t even know how many awards she had won because she never told them.

“If she was talking to me or emailing me, she would ask me about my life,” says Elana. “I would ask, ‘How’s your work going?’ She would say, ‘nose to the grindstone’. That was her expression.”

Siew lived much of her life in America, but never took up citizenship and remained South African all her life.

“Many of the older generation of doctors would know her,” says Elana. “No doctor passed through medical school during the time that she lectured at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) from 1948 to 1965 without being taught by her.”

Siew would speak out against antisemitism, having been faced with the ugliest forms of it from her early childhood.

Born in St Petersburg, Russia, on 12 March 1925, Siew was the youngest of three children. At the time, the country was riddled with blatant antisemitism.

“Jews weren’t allowed to have certain professions,” says Siew’s niece. “Her father wasn’t allowed to be an artist. They had to live in a flat with five other families. Her father was actually arrested for being Jewish. He was in a cell with other Jews for 30 days. Then he got beaten up for a couple of days.”

After that, his brother, who was in South Africa, organised for Siew and her family to escape to the country in 1934.

During her school days, Siew skipped two grades because she was so bright, and then went on to follow in her sister’s footsteps by joining the handful of female students studying medicine at Wits.

She wanted to be a doctor and understand medicine because she knew the frustration of not knowing what was wrong with her own mother, who suffered from an illness that doctors were unable to diagnose correctly.

“She had a professor who failed her four times,” says Elana. “She went up to him and said, ‘What do I have to do to pass?’ He replied, ‘There’s nothing you can do to pass because this isn’t a place for a woman.’”

In spite of this, she attained a Doctorate of Medicine and Doctorate of Philosophy at Wits, and went on to lecture there for 17 years.

She then took up a fellowship in New York as an International Fellow of the American Women’s Association for one year. The New York Medical College  asked her to stay on for a further year. She spent two years in Manhattan focusing on electron microscopy at the New York Medical College. She told people that although she left New York with regret, on a personal level, it was the most difficult and lonely time of her life. Unbeknown to her, in the years to come, her image would be displayed electronically on Times Square Tower on two occasions to honour her contribution to the medical field.

Although she returned South Africa in 1967, work opportunities drew her back to the US in 1970. She moved to Indianapolis and then Pittsburgh two years later. In 1977, she moved to Michigan, where she stayed for the rest of her life, becoming a professor of pathology at Michigan State University.

She had a strong reputation for knowing each student by name and ensuring active participation in her lectures. In 2002, her students honoured her with a plaque and her portrait outside the histology lab for “her commitment and dedication in teaching the Michigan State University student body in the fields of cardiology and pathology for over 20 years”.

Twelve years later, several of her students created the “Dr Shirley Siew Student Award” supporting hopeful students who met the criteria to study for clinical or doctoral degrees from Michigan State University.

Supplementing her career in Michigan, Siew practised as a senior pathologist at the Ingham Medical Center, a consultant in cardiovascular pathology at St Lawrence Hospital, a faculty director in electron microscopy, and then an emeritus pathologist at both the Ingham Regional Medical Center and Sparrow Hospital, in Michigan

In 2011, Siew was named a fellow of the American Heart Association before being appointed to membership of the Clinical Department of Biomedical Sciences.

Siew was also an avid pilot and one of the founding members of the Women’s Aviation Association. Having participated in the South African National Flying Championship in 1965, she continued to fly recreationally well into her 90s.

“She liked the freedom, the height,” says Elana. “She lived quite an intense life. She would work from early morning until 23:00 at night. Flying was the way for her to recharge and regenerate.”

In her spare time, Siew enjoyed photography and reading.

Siew also published 103 articles, participated in 40 scientific exhibitions, and spoke at more than 150 scientific presentations and conferences. Over time, she was presented with eight study grants.

Siew “hung up the saddle”, as she called it, in November 2021, four months short of her 97th birthday, bringing the curtain down on her 76-year career.

She remained close to her family, leaving 10 nieces and nephews, 12 great nieces and nephews, and many close colleagues, relatives and friends.