Dr. Marianne J. Legato is a pioneer in the field of gender-specific medicine. She led the effort to establish sex and gender as important variables in the way we think not just about the experience and treatment of disease, but also health and lifestyle.
Dr. Marianne J. Legato received her MD from New York University College of Medicine in 1962. She went on to complete an internship and junior assistant residency on the Columbia Service at Bellevue Hospital in 1964. From there, she became a senior assistant resident at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and a visiting fellow in cardiology at The Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Her research was supported by grants from the New York Heart Association, the American Heart Association, and the National Institutes of Health. She also served as scientific advisor to the Office of Research on Women's Health at the National Institutes of Health from 1995 to 1998 for which she won a service award in 2000. She became Professor Emerita of Clinical Medicine in 1998. In 1993, Dr. Legato founded the Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University, which went on to become the non-profit Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine in 2006. The Foundation promotes public awareness and scientific research by young investigators in the groundbreaking new field. In 2015, Dr. Legato received an honorary doctorate from the University of Panama for her work in Gender- Specific Medicine. She is an adjunct professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Legato authored The Female Heart: The Truth About Women and Heart Disease in 1992, which showed for the first time a sex-specific difference in the experience and treatment of coronary- artery disease. This inspired Dr. Legato to found the new science of gender-specific medicine. She has written ten books in the field, translated into 28 languages to date. She has also won two PROSE Awards from the Association of American Publishers: once for the third edition of Principles of Gender-Specific Medicine in 2018 for the best book published in clinical medicine, and once more for The Plasticity of Sex in 2021 in the category of biomedicine. A fourth edition of Principles of Gender-Specific Medicine is forthcoming, as is a lay version of The Plasticity of Sex. She was the founder and editor-in-chief of The Journal of Gender-Specific Medicine from 1997 to 2004 and of a second journal, Gender Medicine from 2004 to 2012. Dr. Legato was invited to participate in the 2019 Pontifical Scientific Committee at the Vatican in a seminar concerning gender and personalized medicine.
Dr. Legato continues today as an attending physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and conducts an award-winning gender-specific medicine practice in New York. She has been named annually as a top doctor and physician by Castle Connolly. She has also been named a top doctor by the Consumer Research Council of America, the American Registry, Patient’s Choice, and New York Magazine, among others. Her recent awards include the 2016 Honorary Award for Excellence in Science from the School of Cardiovascular Diseases at the University of Messina in Italy, the 2014 Civic Spirit Award from the Women’s City Club of New York, and the 2006 President’s Award from Women in Health Management.
Dr. Marianne Legato MD. wrote an award-winning book commissioned by the American Heart Association in 1997 which discussed how women experienced coronary artery disease differently than men. Previously, coronary artery disease was considered a "man's disease" and women were not receiving proper diagnosis and treatment, resulting in many deaths.
