Ruth McCorkle

Margaret Ruth McCorkle FAAN, FAPOS (March 4, 1941, in Johnson City, Tennessee – August 17, 2019, in Hamden, Connecticut) was an American nurse, oncology researcher, and educator. She was the Florence Schorske Wald Professor of Nursing at the Yale School of Nursing.

McCorkle's professional biography included research and working as a professor of nursing at the University of Washington School of Nursing in Seattle, Washington, and as a professor of nursing at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing and an associate director of cancer control at the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Comprehensive Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

McCorkle was a prolific writer and her published research appears in many professional nursing and medical journals in the United States and abroad. She received many prestigious awards for her ground-breaking research. Most notably, she was the first non-medical research recipient of a National Cancer Institute Research Training Grant and this opened the door for other disciplines to apply for these training grants. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1990.