In Memoriam: Frances Conley, 1940-2024

Frances Conley, longtime neurosurgery professor at Stanford University, passed away on August 5. She was 83 years old.

Dr. Conley’s career was marked with numerous accomplishments and groundbreaking milestones for women in medicine. In 1966, she became the first woman surgical resident with Stanford University Hospital in California. Nine years later, she joined the faculty full time as an assistant professor and chief of neurosurgery with the Palo Alto VA Hospital, where she researched immunotherapy for brain tumors. In 1982, she became the first woman in the country to be awarded tenure in neurosurgery.

Throughout her career, Dr. Conley held several leadership roles at Stanford University and the broader field of neurosurgery. She served as acting chief of staff for the Palo Alto VA Health Care System and chair of the university’s faculty senate. Additionally, she served as an editor for the journals Neurosurgery and American Family Physician and chair of public relations for the Congress of Neurological Surgeons and the American Association for Neurological Surgeons. She ultimately retired from Stanford in 2000.

In addition to her contributions to the field of neurosurgery, Dr. Conley was an advocate for advancing women’s representation in medicine. In 1991, she made national news for calling out an unfair promotion of a male colleague to chair of Stanford’s neurosurgery department, as well as a pattern of gender inequity from leaders at the School of Medicine. She chronicled her personal perspective of the event in her book, Walking Out on the Boys (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998).

Dr. Conley earned her bachelor’s degree, medical degree, and master’s degree in management science from Stanford University.