Marthe Condat

Marthe Louise Lydie Condat (19 July 1886 – 24 October 1939) was a French physician. She was the first woman to pass the competitive Agrégation de Médecine in 1923. She was the first woman in France to be a professor with a chair in French medicine when she was appointed at the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy in Toulouse. She has a street named after her in Paris and her name is to be added to the Eiffel Tower.

Condat was born in Graulhet, Tarn on July 19, 1886.^[1] Her mother was Marie Athénaïs Victorine, a milliner and her father Georges Condat was a haberdasher.^[2]

Marie-Louise Roques, head of the Lafont boarding school, boasted of Marthe Condat's success as a teenager in achieving an advanced diploma.^[2] The story was covered by the Toulouse newspaper L'Express du Midi in 1903.^[3]

Condat was an intern at the hospitals of Paris from May 1, 1910, to May 1, 1914 (medical internships/residencies lasted four years). From 1914 she worked in residency for a further five years at children's hospital Hôpital des Enfants Malades (the first pediatric hospital in the world)^[4] to compensate for the absence of male staff drafted for military service in World War I. She was awarded a Public Assistance Medal for this work.^[2]

Condat successfully defended her doctoral thesis: "Leukocytolysis and leukocytic fragility" in 1916, for which she was awarded the médaille d’argent de la Faculté. In 1918 she moved to Toulouse.^[1]

Condat became the first woman in France to pass the competitive Agrégation de médecine in 1923, being appointed head of the laboratory and becoming the first woman to hold a chair of medicine in 1932^[1] at the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy in Toulouse.^[2] She was promoted to professor of pediatric medicine in 1936.^[5]

Condat died in Toulouse on 24 October 24, 1939.^[2]

In July 2023, the Paris City Council named a street in the 12th arrondissement after her: the Cité Marthe-Condat.^[6]

She was one of six women honoured in an exhibition by Haute-Garonne Departmental Council in 2023.^[7]

In 2026, Condat was announced as one of 72 historical women in STEM whose names have been proposed to be added to the 72 men already celebrated on the Eiffel Tower. The plan was announced by the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo following the recommendations of a committee led by Isabelle Vauglin of Femmes et Sciences and Jean-François Martins, representing the operating company which runs the Eiffel Tower.^{[8][9][10][11][5]}