The first woman to be made a full professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School (1959), Helen Taussig is renowned as the founder of the medical discipline of pediatric cardiology. She was one of the developers of the "blue baby" operation, a surgical procedure that would correct serious cardiac birth defects in thousands of children. Perhaps her most important contribution to society occurred in the 1960's, when she was instrumental in preventing the thalidomide disaster from occurring in the US, as it had in Europe. In 1965, Dr. Taussig became the first female president of the American Heart Association.