Medical Pioneer. She is credited as the founder of the US Army Nurse Corps. Born Anita Rosalie Newcomb, the daughter of an astronomer, she received a private education. Following graduating in 1882, she traveled to Europe to further her education with courses at Newnham College in Cambridge, England, and University of Geneva in Switzerland. After earning her doctor of medicine degree from George Washington University in 1892, she completed an internship at the Women's Clinic in Washington, D.C., and studied gynecology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. On April 28, 1898, shortly after the onset of the Spanish-American War, Brigadier General George Miller Sternberg, Surgeon General of the United States Army, requested and promptly received congressional authority to appoint women nurses under contract. Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee was placed in charge of selecting graduate nurses for the United States Army, and was named acting Assistant Surgeon General of the US Army, making her the first and only woman permitted to wear an officer's uniform. As a member of the Daughters of the America Revolution in a leadership position, she selected members to interview graduate nurses and compile a roster of competent nurses for the military. She helped the US Navy establish a nursing corps and in 1899, to write a manual on nursing for the military. She was instrumental in organizing the first 1,600 nurses who served during the conflict and helped to write the Army Reorganization Act of 1901, which established the Army Nurse Corps as a permanent unit. In 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, she offered her services to the Japanese government. She was designated with the rank of Superior Nurse Army officer and the Japanese government honored her with the Imperial Order of Precious Crown, the Silver Special Member's Badge of the Japanese Red Cross and two Russo-Japanese War Medals. She received the Spanish American War Service Medal from the United States Army. In civilian life, she continued her studies in eugenics and lectured on a variety of medical subjects, including women in the military. She also lectured on hygiene at the University of California and was published on these subjects. In 1888, she married W. J. McGee, a geologist and anthropologist. The couple had a daughter and two sons with the oldest son dying at age nine months from meningitis. In 1900 she left her position with the Army, but continued leading the Society of Spanish–American War Nurses, a group she had founded in 1898. She led the effort to build the Spanish-American War Nurses Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, which was dedicated on May 2, 1905. In 1922 she was a candidate for the Connecticut State Senate, but was not elected. After dying from a stroke, she was buried next to her father with full military honors. In 1966, at the invitation of the Secretary of the Army, the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution began presenting the Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee Award to the Outstanding Army Nurse of the Year.