Longtime educator, embryologist Shapiro dies at 82

David Kihara

Thursday, Jan. 13, 2005 | 8:43 a.m.

Harriett Shapiro, a longtime educator and noted embryologist, died at her newly acquired Henderson condominium on Wednesday. She was 82.

She had been diagnosed with terminal kidney cancer in November, said her husband, Seymour Shapiro, on Wednesday.

Shapiro is survived by her husband, Seymour, and a son, Carl, who works for the Las Vegas Sun, and a sister, Beverly Cohen of New York.

The longtime Massachusetts resident was a noted educator who taught embryology at the University of Oregon in the early 1960s and genetics and embryology at University of Massachusetts at Amherst on a part-time basis throughout the late 1960s and mid-1970s.

Born Harriett Sher on June 16, 1922, in New York, Shapiro was raised in Brooklyn and later attended Brooklyn College, where she earned a bachelor of science degree in 1945 or 1946, said her husband. In 1947, she earned her master's degree in biology from New York University and specialized in the study of embryos.

During that year, she also married Seymour.

He recalled that he was working part time at Brooklyn College as a storeroom clerk and taking night classes when he met her in 1943.

"I was the lowest level employee at the college," Seymour said. At the time, Shapiro was the president of the Society of Biology and Medicine, a campus organization for students interested in biology.

While he initially thought she might be out of his league, they eventually fell in love and married four years later.

The couple moved around after their marriage, first to Michigan where Seymour was earning a bachelor's and doctorate in botany from the University of Michigan and later to New York and Massachusetts.

They lived in Massachusetts full time until recently and still own a house in Cambridge.

Shapiro's sister, Beverly Cohen, also fondly remembers that her sister had a passion for teaching and a love of science.

"From my point of view she was a wonderful person," said Cohen on Wednesday from New York. Cohen is a former justice with the New York Supreme Court.

Cohen joked that their mother often told her that she should "be like your older sister (Harriett) and practice the piano and get straight A's."

The Shapiros purchased a condominium in June of 2004 and planned to spend the winter in Henderson when she was diagnosed with kidney cancer. She returned to Cambridge to receive treatments and returned to Henderson on Friday to live out her last days.

"Massachusetts is so cold, and she just wanted to sit on the porch and feel the sun," Seymour said.