Ruth Fox Hume

Ruth Fox Hume was an American author born in 1922 and remembered for writing nonfiction and biography for general and younger readers. Sources describing her work say she was a pre-medical student in college and attended medical school briefly before turning to writing, an interest that clearly shaped several of her best-known books.

She wrote about the history of medicine in books such as Great Men of Medicine, Great Women of Medicine, Milestones of Medicine, and Florence Nightingale. She also wrote religious and historical books including Our Lady Came to Fatima, and some records note that she collaborated with Anne Fahrenkopf under the name Alexander Irving.

A few later publisher and bookseller notes describe her as a graduate of Catholic schools, a teacher, and a mother. Taken together, the available record suggests a writer who had a gift for making serious subjects readable and vivid, especially for young people encountering history through story.