Margaret Hei-Ding Lin (林惠贞)
The first western educated Chinese M.D. (gynecology & obstetrics)
She was part of the Class of 1915 and was the first female MD student at the University of Illinois. Dr. Lin returned to China and worked for 25 years, where she delivered tens thousand's babies. After fleeing the war, she returned to UIUC to do postgraduate work from 1939 to 1944, and later practiced medicine in Chicago.
Lin studied in the Medical School of the University from 1911 to 1915, taking her residency at two hospitals in Chicago. While working in Chicago in 1915, she founded the Chicago Chinese Women’s Club. She returned to China in 1917 to become the medical supervisor of Fujian Industrial School and Orphanage in Fuzhou City. She founded Fujian General Hospital in 1919. She also acted as the Head of the Fujian Obstetrical School between 1923 and 1928. From 1930 to 1931, she was the Head of the Women and Children Department of the Chinese Red Cross General Hospital and professor of gynecology and obstetrics in the South Eastern Medical School in Shanghai. She was the editor of the Chinese Medical Journal and a member of the China Women’s Civic Club.
To escape war in China, she returned to the University of Illinois in 1939 as a postgraduate assistant. The University was instrumental in helping Dr. Lin to stay and practice medicine in the US. Dr. Lin became a physician and night supervisor at Oak Forest (Illinois) Hospital and kept a private practice in Chicago’s Chinatown from 1945 to her retirement. In 2004, a small park near Chinatown was named after her to commemorate her contribution to the Chinese-American community.