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Helen Dean King with Wistar rats, the first standardized laboratory animal, circa 1920.
Credit: Courtesy of The Wistar Institute, Wistar Archive Collection, Philadelphia, Pa.
Helen Dean King, a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, led the development and production of the first line of standardized laboratory rats, known as WistarRats, produced between 1906 and 1940. Today, more than half of all laboratory rats are descendants of the original WISTARAT line begun in 1906.