Born in Central City, Colorado in 1871, Sabin graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College in Massachusetts in 1893. In 1900 she became the first woman graduate of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, and in 1902 she was hired to teach anatomy at John Hopkins. In 1917 she became the first woman to receive a full professorship there, and Sabin stayed until 1925 when she became the first woman faculty member at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York. In 1938 she retired from the Institute and returned to Colorado. She died in Denver in 1953. Sabin held 15 honorary degrees, and was the first woman member of the National Academy of Sciences. In her research she made important contributions to the study of histology of the brain, the development of the lymphatic systems, and to understanding the pathology and immunology of tuberculosis.