By Frederick N. Rasmussen , fred.rasmussen@baltsun.com|September 12, 2009
Judith C. Gehret, a computer programmer and faculty member at what is now the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose work during her three-decade career produced valuable research assistance for both professors and graduate students, died of congestive heart failure Sept. 2 at her Sparks home.
She was 76.
Judith Colburn was born in Wilmington, Del., the daughter of Allan P. Colburn, a prominent chemical engineer who had served as acting president of the University of Delaware and was longtime chairman of its chemical engineering department.
Mrs. Gehret was raised in Newark, Del., and was a 1951 graduate of Newark High School. She earned a bachelor's degree in 1955 in mathematics from Smith College.
In 1956, she married Edward F. Gehret, and after raising her four children, went to work in 1970 at what was then the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.
"After I suggested that programming computers was similar to solving logic problems, Judy taught herself to write computer programs and became a programmer for the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health," said Mr. Gehret, a retired senior administrator at the Johns Hopkins University.
"The majority of her work centered on writing computer programs to perform statistical analysis in support of faculty and graduate students," he said.
In addition to computer programming, data processing and statistical analysis, Mrs. Gehret was also a research associate.
"She had helped me with my computer programming when I was a doctoral student in the 1970s. She was always very supportive and never condescending," said Dr. Laurie Schwab Zabin, professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who is director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health.
"In those days, computer usage was a relatively new tool for doctoral students, and she knew how to do it. You had to stuff cards into a large machine and then wait for the green pages to be printed out," Dr. Zabin recalled.
"She handled all the original computer work for Dr. John F. Kantner and Dr. Melvin Zelnick, who did groundbreaking work on adolescent sexual attitudes and behavior. Their study was published in 1971 and again in 1976 and 1979," Dr. Zabin said. "It was a very important work."
Mrs. Gehret was the co-author of several published articles and papers, two of which were "The Radiant Energy Received by Patients in Diagnostic X-Rays" and "The Risk of Ovulation during Lactation."
