She died at her home in Cambridge, Mass., on October 1st. She was older than 70.
Her son said that she had been diagnosed with cancer.
Dr. Benacerraf was a professor at Harvard Medical School and had a private practice, but she struggled academically when she was young because she had an undetected form of Dyslexia.
She said that her success in detecting congenital anomalies was tied to the flip side of the problem.
She said in an interview that pictures just speak to her. I can see patterns in a picture. I can see things that other people can't.
She discovered that a patch of skin at the back of a fetus's neck was associated with Down syndrome and other chromosomal disorders.
Prior to Dr. Benacerraf's research, screening for such defects was limited to women 35 and older, who were thought to be at greatest risk, and amniocentesis, a procedure that can cause a small number of cases to go wrong.
Her first papers suggesting that a less intrusive form of fetal screening could be offered to women of all ages were published in 1985. They were not welcomed well.
Dr. Benacerraf said in an interview with the American Journal of OB/Gyn that he was almost booed off the stage at several national meetings. I was determined to prevail even though I was devastated.
The thickness of the nuchal fold was measured as part of the routine care for pregnant women. The screening was based on her work.
On April 29, 1949, she was born in Manhattan. Her father, a Venezuela-born immunologist named Dr. Baruj Benacerraf, won the 1980 Nobel Prize for his work on genetics.
The army captain at the center of the Dreyfus affair was a member of a prominent French Jewish family. Jacques Monod, Annette Benacerraf's uncle, was awarded a prize for medicine in the 1960's.
Dr. Benacerraf said in an interview that his home in Manhattan was a French OASIS. Francis Crick, the British Biologist who helped decipher the DNA molecule's double-helix structure, was invited to play the flute at dinner parties.
The private all-girls Brearley School in Manhattan was where she attended but she struggled with her learning disabilities.
She said that this habit kept her organized and prevented her from taking on more tasks than she knew she could do.
She was accepted to the school that her mother attended. She excelled academically and worked at a radio station.
She took the Evelyn Wood speed reading course twice, but couldn't overcome her learning disabilities. She took advantage of the money-back guarantee twice.
She didn't know a career path after graduating from college. She decided to become a doctor after taking the medical college admission test. When the results were lost, her score became irrelevant.
She did not have to take the test when she was accepted to the college. Her father's stature helped ease her entry there, as well as her subsequent transfer to Harvard Medical School, but he admonished her.
She said in the interview that her father told her not to do it if she wasn't the best. I was raised with that type of background.
She found that her learning difficulties did not affect her studies.
She said that you can get through medical school if you listen and watch. There are many graphs and images in the books.
She was a medical student at Harvard. The couple were married that year. She was accepted for an internship at Brigham and Women's after graduating from college. She decided to change her mind after finding the field unwelcoming to women.
She remembered that a senior radiologist told her that she could spot an abnormality in an image from the back of a room. He said that he had never seen a gift like that before.
After completing her residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, she went on to complete a fellowship at Brigham and Women's in Ultrasonics. She didn't want to be exposed to radiation, so she chose that field.
After giving birth to her son and daughter a year apart, Dr. Benacerraf was unable to find a hospital job in Boston and opened her own practice there.
Dr. Benacerraf had a son and husband, as well as a daughter and three grandsons.
In an oral history interview, Dr. Benacerraf said she was the only doctor in the Boston area who specialized in pregnant women's health issues. Patients from all over New England and beyond sought her out as her practice grew.
She arrived at her finding relating to the nuchal fold and other discoveries during this time. In the last few years she's focused on conditions like ovarian cancer.
Dr. Benacerraf published hundreds of journal articles and books during her four-decade career. She taught many doctors. In an interview, Dr. Laura E. Riley said that Dr. Benacerraf was a great teacher.
She referred to Dr. Benacerraf as a "trailblazer" in the use ofechocardiography in the service of women's reproductive health.
Her ability to diagnose was second to none.
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