Marguerite Champendal (1870-1928) was the first woman from Geneva to obtain her doctorate in medicine at the University of Geneva (1900). She founded a center for distributing pasteurized milk for infants there, as well as an acclaimed nursing school.^[1]

Champendal was born on 2 June 1870 in Petit-Saconnex a neighborhood in Geneva, Switzerland. She was the third child of pastor Jacques Henri Samuel Champendal and Christine Elisabeth Roch.^[1]

She taught in Paris and Berlin, and then, against the will of her family, began medical studies in Geneva. In 1900 she became the first woman from that city to obtain a doctorate in medicine in 1900.^[2] (While 34 other women also obtained a doctorate at the same time, none were from the city of Geneva.) Her doctoral thesis was titled, Des varices congénitales (Congenital varicose veins).^[2]

In Geneva, she was a contemporary of Dr. Henriette Saloz-Joudra (1855–1928), who had earned her medical degree in 1883 at the University of Geneva and became the first woman to open her own private medical practice in the city.^[3]

In Geneva, a street bears her name, Chemin Doctoresse Champendal.^[1][9]