Elena O. Nightingale

Dr. Elena Ottolenghi Nightingale of Chevy Chase, Maryland passed away peacefully Thursday, April 11, 2024, age 91, with her loving family at her side. Elena Isabella Rachele Ottolenghi was born in Livorno, Italy in 1932. At age seven, she, her parents, and three young sisters escaped the Fascist Italian government, and ultimately the Nazis and the Holocaust. They arrived in New York Harbor on Thanksgiving Day, 1939 on the ship the Conte di Savoia.
She put herself through college and graduate school, earning an A.B. from Barnard College; a Ph.D. from The Rockefeller University, where she was one of two women in the first graduating class; and an M.D. from the New York University School of Medicine, where she met her beloved husband, Dr. Stuart L. Nightingale.
In addition to her husband, to whom she was joyfully married for nearly 59 years, she is survived by her beloved daughters Elizabeth S. Nightingale (Andrew Herrup) and Marisa O. Nightingale (Judge Todd Edelman); and two grandsons, Asher and Jacob Edelman, whom she adored. She is also survived by her three sisters Paola Ottolenghi Velli, Marcella Ottolenghi Buxbaum and Gianna Ottolenghi Galluccio. She was predeceased by her parents Elisa Levi Ottolenghi and Mario Lazzaro Ottolenghi.
Her experiences fleeing Italian Fascist persecution, as reflected in her Shoah Foundation testimony, forged her lifetime commitment to protecting those who could not defend themselves. Her experience as a Jewish refugee who had to leave the family and country she loved did not make her bitter; rather, it fueled her more than 50-year career as a pediatrician, microbiologist, geneticist, scientific and medical researcher, public health and science policy expert, and human rights advocate.
She decided to become a doctor when she was in elementary school, determined to develop skills that would enable her to help others wherever she lived. As her career evolved, she exposed and denounced those who used their medical knowledge to perpetrate harm.
Dr. Nightingale began her career as a laboratory scientist conducting research in microbial genetics. She then moved into clinical genetics and public health and science policy, while at the same time she began a career-long fight against torture, repression, and the abuse of children.
In 1989, under the auspices of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Institute of Medicine, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Public Health Association, she led an investigative human rights mission bringing US physicians to apartheid-era South Africa to examine and document health, health care and human rights violations under the brutal racial segregation laws. They met with South African physicians who were planning health care for all in a post-apartheid South Africa. The resulting publication proved useful to the post-apartheid medical community.
In 1985, Dr. Nightingale and human rights activist Eric Stover went on a mission to Chile on behalf of the AAAS during the Military Junta of General Augusto Pinochet in order to help protect physicians who were treating torture victims and to document the abuses that many other physicians perpetrated. They consulted with physicians, human rights groups and prisoners themselves, whose voices informed their report on the conditions there. They continued their collaboration as co-editors of the seminal book The Breaking of Bodies and Minds: Torture, Psychiatric Abuse, and the Health Professions (1985).
Dr. Nightingale was a founding member of the Advisory Committee of the Children's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, which she continued to advise and serve on for 30 years.
Dr. Nightingale authored, edited, and co-edited numerous articles and books on child and adolescent health, pregnancy and research protections for children, among many other topics.
At her death, she was Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics at the Georgetown University Medical Center and Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics Emeritus at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Earlier in her career, she held academic positions at New York University, Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Harvard; and held a variety of leadership positions at the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), including at the Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Medicine and the National Research Council in Washington, DC. She served as Senior Advisor to the President and Senior Program Officer at the Carnegie Corporation of New York where she worked for over a decade. After retiring from full-time work, Dr. Nightingale served as a Scholar-in-Residence at the IOM/NAM for many years.
She had a wry sense of humor, deep warmth and a firm moral compass, which led her to become a sought-after mentor and friend. Throughout her career, Dr. Nightingale taught, mentored, and opened doors for hundreds of young women scientists, medical students, and organization staff. She supported their academic and professional growth and was candid about the barriers she faced as a woman in science who was always a devoted and present mother, and was often pushed to choose one path or the other.
In 2006, the Institute of Medicine presented Dr. Nightingale with the highest honor for one its members: the annual Walsh McDermott Medal for Distinguished Service.
In an effort to bring a more diverse array of scientists into the NASEM and into leadership roles in science, Dr. Nightingale pioneered an organization-wide effort to examine and address diversity and inclusion. She continued to advise on this work well into her 80's. In 2022, in recognition of Dr. Nightingale's contributions, the NASEM Health and Medicine Division created the Elena Nightingale Award in her honor to recognize annually the staff member who contributed most to diversity and inclusion within and beyond the Academies.
While Dr. Nightingale was gratified by her robust achievements in science, medicine, public health, and human rights work, what she valued most was her beloved family and her many friends of all ages all over the globe. She was a loving and devoted wife, mother and grandmother whose greatest joy was being with her family. She made sure that they knew they were always her top priority.
She improved the lives of those who knew her, and of millions more who never had the chance to know her. She will be deeply missed and cherished always.
There will be a memorial service/celebration of life for her in the fall.
For those who wish to make a donation in Dr. Nightingale's memory, please contribute to the Human Rights Watch Children's Division, http://www.hrw.org/crddonate