The story of Frances Hellebrandt, MD, physiologist and physiatrist, is unfortunately unknown to most physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) physicians, physicians in other medical specialties, and even physical therapists. During her long life and illustrious career, she was a prolific writer, researcher, administrator, and educator. She published on a broad range of topics in exercise physiology, physical education, physical therapy, and PM&R. She investigated the properties of muscle, the science of exercise, and the pathophysiology of muscle disorders. She studied the process through which new sport-specific motor skills were acquired and refined. She made a lasting scientific contribution because of an intense commitment to establishing a research foundation and research capacity for these developing fields. However, because she worked in a variety of disciplines during her career and often did transdisciplinary work, she is not always remembered in the histories of these individual disciplines. Hellebrandt’s work in educating, training, and collaborating with others, including many women scientists and physicians, makes hers a vital legacy that must not be forgotten. Hellebrandt became a physician in 1929 at a time when there were very few women in medicine aside from those who trained in women’s medical colleges and in the few land grant programs, for example, the University of Wisconsin, that accepted female students. In fact, there was a decline in the number of women physicians practicing in the United States from 1900-1950 [1]. Many medical schools closed after the Flexner Report was published in 1910, due to the new standards that were established for medical training, in particular, those training female, black, and working-class students [2,3]. In 1900, there were 7 women’s medical colleges, but, by 1930, the year after Hellebrandt graduated from the University of Wisconsin, only one remained, the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (which is now absorbed, along with Hahnemann University, into Drexel University College of Medicine). Enactment of the Flexner Report recommendations to emphasize training in the scientific foundations of medical practice caused medical education costs to greatly increase and, therefore, put medical education out of the reach of nearly everyone but affluent white men. The percentage of women who graduated from medical schools remained below 5% until the 1970s when Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act of 1972 opened the doors for greater equity across all fields in education [4]. As Barkin et al [3] rgue, “Although the decrease in female medical students may have been multifactorial, the ransformative dream shared by the pioneering female physicians at the beginning of the 0th century faded within a decade of the Flexner report.”