Flossie Wong-Staal

Flossie Wong-Staal was a promising but unknown researcher in the rarefied world of molecular biology when, not even 30 years old, she landed at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., in 1973. It was there, under the guidance of the celebrated but controversial virologist Robert Gallo, that Wong-Staal would burst into the male-dominated field and establish her reputation as a trailblazer in decoding the lethal mysteries of a strange virus the world would come to know as HIV.

Over nearly two decades at the National Cancer Institute, a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Wong-Staal would prove crucial to research that revealed HIV to be the cause of AIDS; become the first scientist to clone HIV, offering a novel view of the virus’s inner tickings; and help map HIV’s genetic code, providing key insights into the development of new tests and treatments.

The ascent happened quickly. Gallo was studying retroviruses, a particularly virulent group that inject their own genetic material into the host’s DNA, and Wong-Staal was captivated by the idea that such viruses could infect humans — a notion widely ridiculed at the time. Gallo soon discovered the first human retrovirus, HTLV-1, which causes a form of leukemia, and Wong-Staal got busy digging through its molecular soup, splicing the virus to determine how it invaded cells.

In little time, she rose from postdoctoral fellow to lead her own teams of research biologists; within five years, she was promoted to senior investigator studying tumor cells; and in 1982 rose again to become section chief of NIH’s molecular genetics lab, just as HIV was exploding on the scene.

The accolades followed. In 1990, the year she left NIH, The Scientist magazine recognized her as the most cited woman in science in the previous decade. In 2019, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

Wong-Staal’s roots were more humble. Born Yee Ching Wong in Guangzhou, China, her family moved following the communist revolution to Hong Kong, where she was educated by nuns in an English-language Catholic school. They encouraged her to change her name; her father chose Flossie, after a typhoon.

Wong-Staal came to Los Angeles to study bacteriology at the University of California, graduating in 1968 after just three years, and earned her Ph.D. in molecular biology at UCLA four years later. 

Despite the challenges of being a minority woman in a chauvinistic field, Wong-Staal said she never personally suffered “overt discrimination.” But that didn’t mean she hadn’t witnessed it. 

“I see it happening sometimes,” she said in a lengthy oral history conducted by NIH in 1997. “At the higher level of decisionmaking, that’s when the old boys’ club operates.”

Wong-Staal died of pneumonia this summer, on July 8, at the age of 73.

— Mike Lillis