In Memoriam: Sara Will Crews Finley, 1930-2013

Sara Finley, a professor emerita at the University of Alabama Birmingham, died last week at the age of 82. She and her husband Wayne H. Finley founded the first genetics program in the southeastern United States. She served for 30 years as the co-director of the Laboratory of Medical Genetics at the University of Alabama Birmingham. At the time of her retirement in 1996, she held an endowed chair in medical genetics named for her and her husband. In 2001 a conference center on campus was named for the couple.

Dr. Finley was a graduate of the University of Alabama and the Medical College of Alabama, which is now the medical school at the University of Alabama Birmingham. She was the first woman president of the University of Alabama Medical Alumni Association and the first woman president of the Jefferson County Medical Society.