Martine Yvonne Katherine Armstrong Richards

Physician and Professor of Medicine Martine Y.K. Armstrong Richards, 93, died at Converse Home in Burlington, Vt., on October 23, 2025.
Born in Paris, France, on December 8, 1931, Martine, spent her childhood in Le Vésinet, outside Paris, the third and last child of Arthur Armstrong, a Scotsman, and Yvonne Armstrong (née Troublé), a Parisienne.
When Nazi tanks rolled toward Paris, in June 1940, she, her two older siblings, and her parents, were ordered to evacuate, "with one suitcase". They abandoned their comfortable house and drove to the Brittany coast. There, they boarded the SS Madura, a British cargo and passenger ship, one of the last vessels to evacuate from Bordeaux, where millions of refugees sought safe passage out of France. Martine recalled sleeping on the open deck for days, "stacked like sardines," with several thousand others, as the ship wandered through the Bay of Biscay toward the English Channel, while being bombed. "I wasn't afraid," she said, "because we knew the Italian Airforce were a bad shot."
Arriving in London, her older sister, Monique, enlisted in the Women's Royal Naval Service while Martine and her brother, Donald, were quickly sent north to live with relatives outside Glasgow, Scotland. Not speaking a word of English, she was taken in for a year by a distant cousin. Though her cousins teased her about her French accent, calling her "wee froggie," they taught her English, and she recalled hikes in the Highlands fondly, a place she loved for the rest of her life.
She later rejoined her parents in London where she finished her education, graduating from the Royal Free Hospital of Medicine, an all-women's medical school within London University. On May 24, 1955, she received the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degree, equivalent to an M.D. in the United States.
As a medical resident, she met her future husband, Frank F. Richards (1928-2011) who was a medical student, and fellow war survivor. He was a German Jew, born Frank F. Sussman, who had escaped from Berlin, joined the Royal Air Force, and then returned to train as a physician and scientist. Martine liked to recall when Frank was courting her-but hadn't yet told anyone about the budding romance-that he would tell his mother that he was going to check on one his medical experiments with guinea pigs. One day, he came home from work and his mother announced, "the guinea pig called to say she would be late for dinner."
They were married in August 1959. The first two of their three children were born in London where Martine and Frank were practicing medicine and beginning their medical research careers.
Martine and her family came to the United States in 1964, she as a research fellow in hematology at Tufts-New England Medical Center, her husband as a research associate in medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital. They had planned to stay just one year, but they found the culture of scientific optimism, and robust government funding, matched their ambitions and they never returned to Britain. In 1968, their third child was born, and Martine completed her Doctor of Medicine degree at London University. That same year, the family left Boston and moved to Yale University School of Medicine where Martine and Frank each took up faculty positions.
Much of Martine's early career focused on the study of viruses. With the appearance of a novel retrovirus, the AIDS virus, in the early 1980s, her attention turned to the study of Pneumocystis jirovecii (previously P. carinii) pneumonia, which, before the advent of retroviral therapy, was a common cause of death in AIDS patients. A focus of her investigations centered on how this fungal infection interacted with lung tissue. Her studies led to some forty research papers and reviews.
In the later part of her career, Martine was increasingly involved in administrative duties, the most important of which was as Chair of the University- wide Yale Animal Care and Use Committee, from its inception in 1985 until her retirement in 1997. This committee was mandated by the Public Health Service to approve and monitor the use and care of animals in research and teaching. Martine was a member of the Yale Biological Safety Advisory Committee from 1984 to 1991 and was Acting Vice-Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health from 1993 to 1995.
In 2015, Martine was inducted into the Winslow Centennial Honor Roll for Excellence and Service to honor 100 alumni and/or faculty who made outstanding contributions to public health during the Yale School of Public Health's first 100 years.
Martine was an exceptional athlete, and, at 18, was invited to try out for the French National Field Hockey Team. Martine enjoyed hiking and biking in her later years and was an avid bird watcher. Martine went cross-country skiing into her 80s, a sport she had taken up in medical school where she and her classmates would take their wooden skis and leather boots to Norway, skiing up and down mountains. "The OG backcountry skiing," her granddaughter said.
After her husband's death in 2011, she moved to Rhode Island where she lived at Laurelmead near her oldest daughter, Claire, and grandchildren and was an active participant in her community. As her health declined, she was cared for at Converse Home in Burlington, Vt near where her younger daughter, Zoe and family, live.
Martine was meticulous, stoical, steadfast, witty, and a lover of great food. For all her accomplishments, she was committed to her family and their well-being above all else.
The family is deeply grateful to the staff of Converse Home and Bayada Hospice for their kind care of Martine in her last year.
She is survived by her children their spouses, Claire Richards (Mitch Berkson), Francis Richards (Katrina Richards), Zoe Richards (Joshua Brown) and eight grandchildren, Madeleine, Julia, and Olivia Berskon; Silas, Rosalie, and Miranda Brown; and Saxon Richards. She is predeceased by her husband and her two siblings, Monique and Donald.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests a gift to Converse Home in Burlington.
A memorial service will be scheduled in New Haven, Ct. in the springtime.