The Brearley School

The Brearley School, The Brearley School is an all-girls private school in New York City. It is located on the Upper East Side of the Manhattan borough of New York City. The school is divided into the Lower School (kindergarten – grade 4), Middle School (grades 5-8) and Upper School (grades 9-12). There are approximately 50 students to each grade.

The school is sometimes considered the sister school of the all boys Collegiate School, the all girls Spence School, and the all girls Chapin School. Brearley is a member of the New York Interschool Association.

Samuel A. Brearley founded The Brearley School in 1884, and he remained the head of school until 1886 when he died of typhoid fever. James G. Croswell was the next head until his death in 1915. Since 1926, Brearley has been headed by women, first by Millicent Carey McIntosh, and 4 more women. In June 2011, headmistress Stephanie J. Hull resigned for undisclosed reasons.

In the early 1900s, it transferred from East 45th Street to West 44th Street and then in 1912 to Park Avenue and East 61st Street, where the primary program was added. The school then moved to a new building in 1929 on East 83rd Street.

Elizabeth Nathan & Gabriella Pollack

Elizabeth Nathan & Gabriella Pollack, The National Gallery for America’s Young Inventors is the only nationally recognized hall of fame for student inventors, established in 1993 and given permission by the adult National Inventors Hall of Fame Board in Washington, D.C. to archive and enshrine great student inventions and inventors K-12.
Elizabeth Nathan and Gabriella Pollack (17-year-olds) invent Nathan and Pollack syringe to help prevent the spread of HIV-AIDS.
Elizabeth Nathan and Gabriella Pollack (17-year-olds) invent Nathan and Pollack syringe to help prevent the spread of HIV-AIDS. Elizabeth Nathan and Gabriella Pollack, both 17-year-olds, came up with the idea of inventing a nonreusable syringe to “help stop the spread of AIDS.”

The idea for the mechanism inside the syringe works on the same principle as a cocktail umbrella. In fact, it is where the idea originally came from.

After the initial use, the syringe plunger becomes immobilized. And if an individual pulls the plunger out, the needle breaks off so it cannot be used again.

“I came up with the idea after reading an article about AIDS,” says Elizabeth. At the time, Elizabeth’s chemistry class was also using a syringelike device to demonstrate the relationship between pressure and volume.

“We wrote up our idea and entered it in the NYNEX Science and Technology Awards competition,” says Gabriella. “We didn’t have to make a prototype [model],” she adds, “but we had to write a paper describing the reason for the invention, and the invention itself. “Our invention won first prize at the competition: $15,000 each and grant money to develop the intervention with a university,” says Gabriel.