Neva Martin Abelson receives the Regents 23rd Distinguished Alumnus Award. She is the wife of famed-chemist Phillip Ableson, and co-founder of the global test for Rh blood factor which has saved millions of babies’ lives.  Neva was one of the first women to earn a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University, and the first woman to be in charge of the hospital’s nurseries there. Later she was a professor of pediatrics and pathology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work in pediatrics piqued her interest in the Rhesus factor and its relation to blood disease in tiny infants, which at the time was a likely cause of death or mental retardation.