Mildred T. Stahlman

Hundreds of thousands of children are saved every year by the work started by one person—it is a statistic that may seem far-fetched, but it is real. Mildred Thornton Stahlman, or “Millie” as she was called by those closest to her, was an architect of modern neonatal care and is credited with establishing the first sophisticated neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) during her long career at Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.

From microscope to medical school

Stahlman was born on July 31, 1922, to an influential family in Nashville. Her father, James (Jimmy) Stahlman, was a third-generation publisher and president of the Nashville Banner, the afternoon newspaper. The Stahlman family was well-connected and well-off thanks to her father’s career, and Mildred Stahlman grew up on a large plot of land surrounded by animals, including horses, parrots, and even a baby groundhog. Helping to take care of so many creatures cultivated in her a love of animals from a young age and gave her a great deal of early exposure to “rudimentary biology,” as her biographer, Corey Nason Reese, explained to Encyclopædia Britannica in 2025. It was an experience that would prove critical in Stahlman’s future endeavors.

Stahlman and her older sister, Ann Stahlman (later Hill), attended a prestigious secondary school for young women in Nashville. Whereas her sister was focused on theater, Mildred Stahlman was distinctly different: “She played field hockey, and she loved to ride horses,” said Reese, adding that, after her parents divorced, Stahlman bonded with her father over these interests. “They would ride on Sunday mornings. And then her dad was a member of Belle Meade Country Club, and they would have brunch together.”

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Stahlman became particularly known for her memory. Even at the end of her life, she could recite things she had learned in high school and college, Reese said. Given that her path to medicine had been set in her mind since she received a microscope about age 11, her sharp memory was a great asset.

Early career

Stahlman was admitted to an accelerated six-year program for undergraduate and medical school. She graduated in 1943 from Vanderbilt University and then went directly to Vanderbilt Medical School, where she was one of four women in her class.

In a 2010 interview with Anjuli Young for Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s House Organ magazine, Stahlman recalled that time, when she was adamant about not wanting special support: “You are treated the way you expect to be treated. I expected to be treated as an equal, and I was.”

At medical school, she excelled as a pediatric specialist and went on to receive honors upon graduation in 1946. Although it is likely that the field had some sort of inherent appeal to her, Stahlman never spoke of exactly what drew her to pediatrics. Still, with few women in medicine, working with children was considered a more conventional path in this era.

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Furthermore, the specialization of pediatrics was still relatively new and would therefore allow her to make more of an impact while general positions were quickly filled. On top of that, when she had started her undergraduate career, millions of men in the United States were being drafted to fight in World War II. But these men returned when she was in the latter stages of medical school, and those who were either medical students or doctors took precedence in job placement, according to Reese.

After completing her clinical internship at Lakeside Hospital in Cleveland and her first year at Boston Children’s Hospital, Stahlman returned to Nashville for a second year of residency at Vanderbilt, where in 1949 she was chosen to be the first-ever exchange fellow at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. It was a life-changing experience, because it was her first exposure to in-depth academic research—and, as Reese noted, she caught the bug for it.

At Karolinska, Stahlman researched infant cardiology with John Lind and Petter Karlberg, both of whom would go on to be her lifelong friends. However, Stahlman eventually realized that cardiology was not her calling, said Reese.

Stahlman was able to pivot when she began researching cardiopulmonary physiology alongside Elliot Newman, whom she would later call her “most important mentor.” This decision proved to be one of the biggest of her career.

In 1954 Stahlman was awarded a National Institutes of Health grant to study neonatal cardiorespiratory disease, with sheep as her research subjects, and she began using iron lung machines, which were originally developed to help patients with polio. Newman encouraged Stahlman to apply for an additional grant a few years later, one that was even larger.

The birth of the NICU

While at a conference about this time, a company approached Stahlman to gauge her interest in developing an iron lung for infants, a type of negative pressure ventilator. Her response: a resounding yes.

After securing the second grant in 1959, the stars began to align for Stahlman at Vanderbilt. She began forming the first example of what is now known as the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). With her lab next to the nursery unit, Stahlman worked to further develop monitoring systems for blood-gas concentrations modified for the small bodies of infants and to improve the tools necessary to help infants breathe.

And then, suddenly, it was time to put everything to the test. On October 31, 1961, Martha Humphreys was born about two months early, gasping for air because of her underdeveloped lungs. With the permission of the infant’s parents, Stahlman stepped in and placed the premature newborn in the ventilator, which used a combination of negative and positive pressure. Stahlman monitored her around the clock for four days and four nights. On the fifth day, Humphreys was weaned off the ventilator. Stahlman’s NICU had saved its first infant.

By keeping Martha Humphreys alive for those few days, the respirator gave her lungs time to mature. Though not every case was as successful, enough were that Stahlman was able to present this information at various conferences around the world and stir conversation in neonatology, leading to an array of advancements in the field and the further establishment of the modern NICU worldwide.

Other major accomplishments

Though Stahlman’s best-known accomplishments are her work on developing the NICU and her major role in founding the field of neonatology, she continued to be a pioneer, working well into her 80s.

At Vanderbilt, Stahlman initiated one of the first neonatology fellowship programs, ultimately training 84 fellows from 20 countries throughout her tenure.

When teaching, she was exacting and unafraid. Though she comforted infants, Stahlman was known to have made men cry when they forgot details of their newborn patients.

“As long as you did what she asked and were on time and accurate in what you did, you were fine, but she did not tolerate anything less than—I don’t want to say perfection, but at least being accurate,” Mark Hunt told Encyclopædia Britannica in 2025. Hunt worked alongside Stahlman for nearly 20 years as the administrator of Vanderbilt’s neonatology labs. “She could cuss like anybody, like a sailor.”

Even though she was only about 5 feet tall, she was larger than life to her trainees, Reese added.

In 1974 Stahlman also developed Vanderbilt’s neonatal and pediatric transport team, known as the “Angel” transport system, to provide for the emergency transfer of infants and premature newborns to another hospital for more treatment. After Stahlman had started the NICU, there was a major challenge: The machinery could not be transported long distances, and neither could the infants who needed it most. By developing transport systems, the number of newborns saved was amplified greatly.

She served as the president of the American Pediatric Society from 1984 to 1985 and was also a strong voice for medical ethics. Her advocacy stretched from infants themselves to their mothers and maternal health care broadly, especially for those in underserved communities. She believed that if issues of poverty and other social determinants of health could be mitigated, the issue of prematurity could be prevented.

Stahlman went on to work with renowned scientist Mary Phillips Gray for nearly 20 years on lung development and electron microscopy in newborn disease. She continued to go into the lab through the early 2010s.

Personal life and legacy

Stahlman had a farm in Humphreys county, west of Nashville. In addition to sponsoring scholarships for students in the county to pursue higher education, she privately assisted those around her who were in need, Hunt added. In a 2000 interview with Vanderbilt University Medical Center, she explained her motivations for the scholarship:

It’s a rural county and a poor county. Many kids don’t have the opportunity to get into competitive schools. I thought this was one way I could help.

Stahlman died from natural causes on June 29, 2024, at her restored log cabin in Brentwood, Tennessee. She was 101 years old.

Her legacy lives on in her contributions to medicine. As a result of her accomplishments, she received numerous honors and awards, including keys to the cities of New Orleans and Nashville and a similar honor in Nancy, France. She also published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles and nearly 140 abstracts—work that has paved the way for other lifesaving innovations for mothers and infants alike.