Ida Stephens Owens (September 13, 1939 – February 24, 2020) was an American scientist known for her work with drug-detoxifying enzymes. She received her Ph.D from Duke University in 1967, making her one of the first two African Americans to receive a doctorate from the school. She spent her career at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where she worked from 1968 to 2017 and pioneered the study of the genetics of human diseases and drug metabolism. Early life Ida Virginia Stephens Owens grew up on a farm in the small town of Whiteville, North Carolina. Her mother died when she was six years old. Education Owens' early education was in segregated public schools. Owens then attended North Carolina College, now North Carolina Central University, graduating in 1961 summa cum laude in Biology (B.S.) and Mathematics (minor). After graduating, she was employed as a laboratory assistant at a National Science Foundation Summer Institute for High School Teachers at North Carolina College, and she spent a summer in the lab of Daniel C. Tosteson in the Department of Physiology at Duke University. Then, in 1962, she began her Ph.D. studies of biochemistry and physiology in the laboratory Jacob J. Blum at Duke shortly after the university racially integrated its graduate and professional schools. When she graduated in 1967, she became one of two first African Americans, the first woman, to receive a Ph.D. from Duke University and the first woman to receive any degree in physiology from Duke. Scientific career After graduating, Owens held a postdoctoral position at the NIH, first at the then-called National Institute of Arthritis, Metabolic, and Digestive Diseases in the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Metabolism and then in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in the Section on Developmental Pharmacology in the Laboratory of Biomedical Sciences. During this time, she focused on how drugs are chemically processed in the body. In 1975, Owens began to lead her own independent research group at NIH NICHD within the Section on Drug Biotransformation, which later became the Section on Genetic Disorders of Drug Metabolism. She was the first African American investigator at NIH. Starting in 1988, Owens has directed NICHD's Section on Genetic Disorders of Drug Metabolism in the Program on Developmental Endocrinology and Genetics. Scientific advancements Owens' postdoctoral work sparked her specific interest in a critical group of enzymes, called UDP-glucuronosyltransferases (abbreviated UGTs), which allow