Dora Goldstein

Dora B. Goldstein
Born	Dora Benedict (1922-04-25)April 25, 1922 Milton, Massachusetts, US
Died	October 2, 2011(2011-10-02) (aged 89) Palo Alto, California, US
Occupation	Pharmacologist
Years active	1953–1988
Known for	Identifying biochemistry of alcohol withdrawal syndrome
Notable work	Pharmacology of Alcohol (1983)

Dora B. Goldstein (April 25, 1922 – October 2, 2011),^[1] nicknamed "Dody", was a pharmacologist and professor who researched the effects of ethanol on the body and the biochemistry of alcohol addiction and alcohol withdrawal syndrome. A Bay Stater, she studied medicine at Bryn Mawr College and Harvard Medical School, with an interruption during World War II to help the war effort, before joining the faculty at Stanford University in the 1950s. Becoming a tenured professor of pharmacology, she was well known for her research and classes keeping on the edge of new biochemical visualization technologies into the 1980s, along with her efforts to promote the advancement of women in science at the university.

Beginning her research in bacterial enzymology and later neurochemistry, Goldstein published a series of papers in the 1970s that broke down how alcohol and its biochemical addiction process functions in mice, breaking the cultural idea of human addiction being a moral failing of the individual. She would continue in the following decades to show how alcohol molecules impact cellular membranes and induce resistance and dependency after long term exposure, along with the genetic markers making an individual higher risk for developing such an addiction.

Receiving several awards for her work on alcoholism, including the Jellinek Memorial Award, she also served as President of the Research Society on Alcoholism. In her personal time, she was highly active in social justice movements, including the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the LGBT rights movement of the 1990s.