doi: 10.3389/fped.2014.00050

I was so pleased to learn that the inaugural issue of the neonatology specialty section of Frontiers in Neonatology would high-light Mary Ellen “Mel ” Avery’s contribu-tions to decades of neonatal research. Mel was my mentor and friend for more than 30 years, and it is a great honor for me to write about some of her substantial accom-plishments. Among her many contribu-tions, three are especially notable because they have saved the lives and improved the health of countless newborns: identifica-tion of surfactant deficiency as the cause of respiratory distress syndrome (RDS), treat-ment of RDS with artificial surfactant, and prevention of RDS with antenatal steroids. In a paper she wrote about how it really happened,Mel dated her interest in respira-tory physiology to the start of her pediatric internship at Johns Hopkins in 1952 (1). Only 1 month after she began her training, a routine tuberculin skin test that was pos-itive and a small upper lobe infiltrate on a chest radiograph consistent with tuber-culosis prompted a course of antibiotics and a prescription for 6 months of bed rest. During this period, questions about her own treatment spurred her quest for more knowledge of respiratory physiology. Returning to her pediatric residency at Johns Hopkins, Mel cared for many pre-mature infants with a lung condition then called hyaline membrane disease (HMD), and now known as RDS. Nearly half of the affected infants died, usually in the first 3 or 4 days, with pathology character-ized by atelectasis and hyaline membranes (2). Infants who survived the first few days typically made a complete recovery. Mel wanted to learn more about the lungs of newborn infants, especially those with HMD. In 1957, following her residency, she moved to Boston to study respiratory physiology with Jere Mea