Dr. Leona Baumgartner (August 18, 1902—January 15, 1991) was born in Chicago and grew up in Kansas, where she earned her master's degree in 1925. She obtained her Ph.D. and M.D. degrees from Yale, and did her internship in New York City. She joined the New York City Department of Health in 1937, becoming Health Commissioner in 1954; in 1958 she was one of the few women physicians to visit the Soviet Union. In 1962 Baumgartner became head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, where she was involved in several vaccination campaigns and in water fluoridation.