Dr. Helena G. Miller

04/06/2001

Dr. Helena deKay Gilder Miller, 87, of 10450 Lottsford Road, Mitchellville, Md., a summer resident of Tyringham, died April 6 at home in Mitchellville. She was the last surviving granddaughter of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Born in New York City on Nov. 11, 1913, daughter of Rodman and Comfort Tiffany Gilder, she graduated in 1935 from Vassar College and in 1940 from Cornell Univer-sity Medical College. She was a resident of Upper Montclair, N.J., for 50 years. Dr. Gilder, a biochemist for many years at Cornell University Medical College in Ithaca, N.Y., was a champion of women in medicine and a mentor for young women medical students. She was a leader in the American Medical Women's Association and in the Women's Medical Associ-ation of New York City. She was treasurer of both the National Council on Women's Health and the Office of Women in Medicine for 24 years. She engaged in research and teaching until her retirement in the 1990s. She was a Mary Putnam Jacobi Fellow at the Rockefeller Institute, where she was in residency, and went to Cornell in 1946. In the early days, she worked on muscular dystrophy and infectious hepatitis. In 1949, she organized the Biochemical Research Laboratory in the Department of Surgery at Cornell. For 20 years, her major interest was the body's metabolic response to injury and shock. Later, she began the study of lung surfactant with Dr. Charles McSherry in a project funded by the Navy. She collaborated often and, in the early days, worked with her aunt and mentor, Julia Tiffany Weld, and her first husband, Robert Alan Philips. Her husband, A. Amasa "Ted" Miller, died April 19, 1985. They were married Oct. 3, 1948. She leaves two sons, Rodman Gilder Miller of Seattle and A. Amasa Miller of New Orleans; two daughters, Julia Tiffany Hartman of Alexandria, Va., and Virginia Ann Miller of Ithaca; nine grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. She was predeceased by two daughters, Helena deKay and Terry Miller Murphy. A memorial service is being planned for early summer in Tyringham. Dr. Gilder was predeceased by her siblings, Richard Watson Gilder, Julia Gilder Treat and Rodman Gilder. She also leaves a niece, Philippa Claude of Madison, Wis., and many nieces and nephews.

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