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Personal papers of obstetrician, Emanuel A. Friedman. Includes his writings, project studies, translations, presentations, notebook, and microfilm documenting his medical and academic career.
History and Biography
Dr. Emanuel A. Friedman was born in Brooklyn on June 9, 1926. He earned a B.A. degree from Brooklyn College in 1947, and an M.D. from the College of Physicians and Surgeons (P&S), Columbia University in 1951. Between 1951 and 1957, he was an intern and resident at Sloane Hospital for Women of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, Bellevue Hospital, and Francis Delafield Hospital.
As a resident at Sloane Hospital in 1953, he studied the graphical analysis of labor progression. His research generated the “Friedman curve,” an S-shaped curve relating cervical dilation to the duration of labor. For this major work in the new field of cervimetry, he earned a Sci.D. degree from P&S in 1959. Between 1957 and 1963, he rose from Instructor to Associate Professor in Obstetrics and Gynecology at P&S.
In 1963, he became Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Chicago Medical School and at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. From 1969 to 1990, he was Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School (and Chairman of the Department between 1971 and 1976), and Obstetrician-Gynecologist-in-Chief at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.
Dr. Friedman was long involved with the National Collaborative Perinatal Project (NCPP), a major government-funded study of 64,000 births. Starting as the obstetric coordinator of the field unit at Columbia University in 1957, Dr. Friedman collected and analyzed NCPP data and published books derived from this research into the 1980s. Throughout his career, Dr. Friedman wrote extensively-- a bibliography of his works lists over 500 publications. Following his retirement from Harvard, Dr. Friedman returned to New York City, teaching at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
In 2020, the Perinatal Research Branch of the National Institutes of Health, along with the American Journal of OB/GYN, recognized Friedman as a “Giant in Obstetrics/Gynecology.” Emanuel Friedman died of respiratory failure on February 13, 2025 at the age of 98 years in New York.
Organization
Arranged into seven series. Series 1: Early Work at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center; Series 2: Collected Manuscripts, 1953-89; Series 3: Book Manuscripts; Series 4: National Collaborative Perinatal Project (NCPP), Perinatal Branch of the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke (NINCDS), National Institutes of Health (NIH); Series 5: Translations with E. Judith Friedman; Series 6: Microfilms; Series 7: Accession 2023.025.
The Emanuel Friedman papers consist largely of bound volumes of writings, project studies, and translations. The collection also includes a research notebook, his doctoral thesis, case reports, a bound work signed to him by the author, and microfilms of project data. These papers document the long career and prolific output of
a leading obstetrician-gynecologist over more than 35 years, and provide an overview of the development of modern research in obstetrics and gynecology.
The earliest materials in the collection are those relating to Dr. Friedman’s career at Sloane Hospital for Women. The research notebook from 1953 is of particular interest, as it documents the raw data Dr. Friedman used to develop the graphic analysis of labor. This work is explained fully in his 1959 Sci. D. thesis on cervimetry. From this period is also an inscribed copy of Dr. Albert Plentl’s work investigating the drug Sparteine.
The bound volumes have been arranged into four groups: “Collected Manuscripts,” book manuscripts, NCPP studies, and translations. “Collected Manuscripts” contains typescripts of published articles, as well as some unpublished talks and presentations. The volumes are arranged chronologically, and each contains a table of contents. Book manuscripts consist of typescripts of books Dr. Friedman wrote or edited, alone or with others. Manuscripts of books in the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library are followed by their call numbers. The NCPP materials include typescripts of published studies as well as project data and administrative documents in bound volumes. The translations are English language versions of German obstetrical and surgical texts edited and translated by Dr. Friedman and his wife, E. Judith Friedman. For the book manuscripts and NCPP studies, the bound volumes are arranged alphabetically by title. The translations are arranged alphabetically by author.
There are 57 rolls of microfilm in the Friedman papers, and virtually all relate to the NCPP project. The microfilms include statistical data from Presbyterian Hospital and Beth Israel Hospital, and large quantities of NCPP project data, including data related to Dr. Rudolf Vollman’s research on the menstrual cycle.
Series 7 contains writings accessioned in 2023, the bulk drafts of academic papers, in addition to born-digital drafts and galleys from his book, Labor and delivery care: a practical guide, co-authored by Wayne R. Cohen, published by Wiley-Blackwell (2011).
Subject Headings and Related Records
Administrative Information
Gift of Emanuel Friedman in 2000 (accession 2000.05.3) and 2023 (2023.025).
Processed by Bob Vietrogoski, Archivist, June 2000. Later 2023 accrual processed by Cameron Mitchell and Jennifer Ulrich, 2024. Contact hslarchives@columbia.edu regarding unprocessed material accessioned in 2024.