Native American Heritage Spotlight: Floy Agnes Lee

Floy Agnes (Naranjo) Lee was born in 1922 at the Albuquerque Indian School. Lee’s mother was a German American who traveled the U.S. teaching at various Indian schools including the Albuquerque Indian School where Lee’s father (member of the Santa Clara Pueblo) also taught.

Lee graduated from the University of New Mexico with a degree in biology. As a biologist, she worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos in the hematology laboratory where she collected and examined blood samples from lab workers and fellow scientists to determine the impact of radiation exposure on their blood cells.

After World II, Lee continued her studies at the University of Chicago earning a doctorate in biology while also working at the Argonne National Laboratory. She later worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California as a senior scientist and returned to Los Alamos National Laboratory as a radiobiologist in the lab’s Mammalian Biology Group. Over her long career, Lee worked in radiation biology, conducting cancer research, and advancing the science of tissue culture and chromosome analysis. During the 1960s, she pioneered a method of computer analysis of chromosomes, using an electron microscope.

Lee died in 2018 at the age of 95.

Learn more about Floy Agnes Lee.