Evelyn Grollman Wolff

1940 - 2019
Physician, scientist, and iconoclastic personality Evelyn Grollman Wolff died of natural causes in her Manhattan apartment on Sunday, December 15, 2019. Born in Baltimore on February 9, 1940, and raised in Dallas, Texas, she matriculated at Sarah Lawrence College at age 16, and went on to earn a medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, one of just a few women in her graduating class. During the 1960s, she practiced medicine at Bellevue Hospital, then continued her practice in Northern Virginia. In 1970, she collaborated with her father, Dr. Arthur Grollman, on the widely used Pharmacology and Therapeutics: A Textbook for Students and Practitioners of Medicine and Its Allied Professions. Drawn by laboratory work, she transitioned to endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health, developing an expertise in the thyroid. She worked at NIH for the next 23 years.

After retirement, she returned to Manhattan where she enjoyed everything about being a New Yorker except not having sufficient space for her beloved Steinway. She immersed herself in exploring the city, visits to Hampton Bays with her cousin Mary, and spending time with her children and their families: Ethan, Stephanie, Izzy, and Josie Wolff and Anna, Mike, Kelly, Molly, and Aaron Sandler. She is survived by her former husband Elroy Wolff, her older sister and brother, and extended family. Known to many as "Dr. Mom," she will be remembered for her candor, wit, style, and, perhaps most of all, for her unending generosity.