Beryl Benacerraf

Beryl Rice Benacerraf (April 29, 1949 – October 1, 2022) was an American radiologist and professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology and radiology at Harvard Medical School.

She spent her early years in France and returned to New York City at age seven, attending the Brearley School and Barnard College in Manhattan.

Although undiagnosed dyslexia had impaired her academic performance as an undergraduate, Benacerraf stated it was less of a handicap in medical school, where the textbooks included "a lot of graphs and images and charts".

[1] Benacerraf pioneered the field of "genetic sonography"[3] with her discovery that nuchal fold thickness–the distance between the occipital bone and the surface of the overlying skin at back of the neck–was a reliable metric for second-trimester diagnosis of Down syndrome.

"[2] However, a flurry of independent studies in the late '80s and '90s affirmed the diagnostic value of fetal ultrasound, and the nuchal translucency scan (pictured), the first-trimester analog of the nuchal fold thickness test, is now a standard component of prenatal aneuploidy screening.

[3] Benacerraf was married in 1975 to Peter Libby, who became chief of cardiology at Brigham and Women's and Mallinckrodt Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.