Henrietta Lacks

Henrietta Lacks (born Loretta Pleasant; August 1, 1920 – October 4, 1951)^[1] was an African-American woman^[3] whose cancer cells are the source of the HeLa cell line making it the first immortalized human cell line^[A] and one of the most important cell lines in medical research.^[5][6]

Henrietta Lacks
Born	Loretta Pleasant (1920-08-01)August 1, 1920 Roanoke, Virginia, U.S.
Died	October 4, 1951(1951-10-04) (aged 31) Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Cause of death	Adenocarcinoma of the cervix
Monuments	Henrietta Lacks Health and Bioscience High School; historical marker at Clover, Virginia
Occupations	Housewife tobacco farmer[1][2]
Spouse	David Lacks ​ (m. 1941)​
Children	5

Notes

1. "In Steve Silberman's Book Review of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Nature 463, 610; 2010), ... Your lead-in claims that the death of Henrietta Lacks "led to the first immortal cell line", but that distinction belongs to the L929 cell line, which was derived from mouse connective tissue and described almost a decade earlier (W. Earle J. Natl Cancer Inst. 4, 165–212; 1943). As Silberman notes, Lacks's was the first mass-produced human cell line."^[4]