He soon became one of the first researchers to discover a human retrovirus, a type of virus that can cause cancer and other diseases. She then transferred to the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., where she joined a lab run by Gallo, a rising star who was exploring whether viruses can cause cancer. In 1973, she briefly served as a postdoctoral researcher at UC San Diego, which had established a medical school only five years earlier. in 1964, enrolling at UCLA, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in bacteriology and a doctorate in molecular biology. “He saw a list of names for typhoons that hit Southeast Asia, and picked Flossie.” “Since I did not want to be another Mary or Theresa, I asked my father to choose something unusual,” Wong-Staal told the magazine Psychology Today. But her parents pushed her academically and at the urging of the school they changed her first name to the English Flossie. Historians note that no women in her family had worked outside the home or studied science. “She was interested in poetry and writing, but she did well on tests and was directed into science, where she discovered her passion,” said Stephanie Staal of New York, one of Wong-Staal’s two daughters. Her family moved to Hong Kong in 1952, where she enrolled in an all-girls Catholic school. She was born as Yee Ching Wong on August 27, 1946, in Guangzhou during the Chinese Communist Revolution, when roughly 1.5 million people were killed.

Wong-Staal was one of many Chinese immigrants who became distinguished figures in American science and medicine.

D3 grasp of the dead