year became the first woman appointed chair of the section. In 1936, the New York Women's Medical Society honored Dr. Williams for her services to the city at a testimonial dinner. In her acceptance speech, she thanked the colleagues she had worked with over the years, including many of the women who were building careers in bacteriology alongside her or under her own mentorship at the Department of Health. In 1934, despite an outpouring of support, Williams along with nearly a hundred other workers was made to step down from her position by New York City's mandatory retirement age of seventy. Upon her retirement, mayor Fiorello La Guardia accurately summed up Williams' career: she was, he said, "a scientist of international repute". After retiring, Williams lived another twenty years with her sister in Westwood, New Jersey, where she died in 1954 at the age of ninety. Publications Log-in required. Williams, Anna Wessels (1932). Streptococci in relation to man in health and disease. London : Baillière, Tindall & Cox; Baltimore : Williams & Wilkins. Manuscript. Bibliography References Further reading O'Hern, Elizabeth Moot (1985). “Anna Wessels Williams 1863–1954”. Profiles of Pioneer Women Scientists. Acropolis Books. pp. 32–. . Sicherman, Barbara; Green, Carol Hurd (1980). “Anna Wessels Williams. Military: Florence Aby Blanchfield --”. Notable American Women: The Modern Period: A Biographical Dictionary. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. . . “Williams, Anna Wessels--1863–1954”. Records of the Bureau of Vocational Information, 1908–1932. Schlesinger. (1908). . External links Anna Wessels Williams Papers. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University National Library of Medicine, Dr. Anna Wessels Williams Biography 1863 births 1954 deaths People from Hackensack, New Jersey American bacteriologists American microbiologists Women microbiologists