Profiles of Transgender Courage: Alan L. Hart

Alan Hart was a transgender American physician, researcher, and novelist. He was born in October of 1890. His father died when he was very young and his mother remarried when Hart was only five years old. For the early part of his formative years, he was allowed to present as a boy and his gender expression was supported by his family. When his grandparents died, he was even listed as their grandson in their obituaries.

When he was twelve, his family moved to Albany, New York where he was forced to dress as a girl in order to attend school. However, he was allowed to write essays under his chosen name as authors commonly used pseudonyms, including names of the opposite gender at the time. He tended to write about masculinized female figures, often portraying them as athletes.

Hart attended a variety of colleges from 1912-1917 including Albany College, University of Oregon, and Stanford. In 1917 he received a Doctorate of Medicine degree but was dismayed that it had been issued in his female name. Hart felt that it would limit his opportunity to use the degree in any effective way because it had been issued in that way.

In 1917, Hart underwent gender confirmation surgery. At that time, the procedure only involved the removal of female sex organs and the implanting of testicular tissue in place of the ovaries. Hart was the first medical case in the U.S. in which a doctor recommended the removal of a healthy organ for the sole reason of the person's gender identity. After his surgery, he legally changed his name and began practicing medicine in Gardiner, Oregon.

After he was outed by a former classmate as transgender, Hart moved around the country and continued his education in the medical field. He attended the Trudeau School of Tuberculosis and the University of Pennsylvania where he received a Masters Degree in Radiology. In 1929, he was appointed the Director of Radiology at Tacoma General Hospital. He also worked in a couple of sanitoriums and was also appointed as a medical adviser at the Army Recruiting and Induction headquarters in Seattle, Washington. In 1948 he received a Masters Degree in Public Health from Yale.

Hart dedicated most of his career to researching and developing treatments for tuberculosis. The disease was a major killer in the early part of the 20th century and Hart was one of the first physicians to discover and document the fact that a plethora of other diseases was actually tuberculosis that had spread from the lungs to other areas of the body. He also discovered that X-rays could be used as an integral part of early tuberculosis detection. This allowed for the early treatment of patients, often saving their lives. By the 1940's, the death toll from tuberculosis had been cut down to 1/50. A severe improvement thanks to Hart's efforts.

Hart was also an accomplished writer, having a variety of work in both fiction and non-fiction. Some of his fictional works were about doctors, much of it has inspired medical fiction throughout the years.


Alan L. Hart died July 1, 1962. After his death, a fund was set up for research into leukemia. The interest on his estate is donated annually to this fund.