Analyst, MS Advocate Christina Wise-Mohr

Christina Wise-Mohr, 59, a senior analyst at the National Science Foundation and the founder in 1998 of a multiple sclerosis support group in Montgomery County, died of the autoimmune condition July 24 at her home in Silver Spring.

Dr. Wise-Mohr, who wrote and spoke about MS's impact on her work and life, joined the National Science Foundation in 1983. She had a diplomacy fellowship with the U.S. Agency for International Development in the 1990s and returned to the NSF in 1996.

After learning she had MS, Dr. Wise-Mohr began walking with a cane in 1992. She called it "the first observable evidence of my condition." She soon began using a wheelchair.

Her agency's guidelines made welcome allowances for her physical limitations, including letting her work at home through a computer hookup, she wrote in The Washington Post's Outlook section in 1992.

"My experience, however, has taught me that for those of us with obvious physical limitations, compassionate but often incorrect assessments of our condition can squelch our chances to excel; and they encourage us, unintentionally, to be disabled," she wrote.

During her career, she drafted the first NSF report to Congress assessing the status of academic research facilities. She wrote hundreds of speeches, numerous newspaper and Op-Ed articles, and Congressional testimony. She also arranged an Internet demonstration for local government officials in the early days of the World Wide Web.

In 1998, she and Marcel Bardon, who directed the NSF's physics division, founded the NSF's Art of Science Project. The project brings to the agency original art that explores the connections between artistic and scientific expression.

Dr. Wise-Mohr, who was known as an objective analyst and a quick learner, was a senior analyst from 1996 to her retirement in 2001.

While with the USAID from 1994 to 1995, she helped design a strategy to promote Internet access in Africa. She also visited South Africa and Zimbabwe to document the use of the Internet, then an early version called FidoNet, for tracking food shipments by the World Food Program.

She encountered inconveniences while traveling abroad with her wheelchair over the years, but she said she also met interesting people along the way.

"Traveling with MS can present some uncommon obstacles, but it can also offer rare insights into the nature of our fellow travelers," she wrote in a 1997 MS magazine.

Christina Crowell was born in San Diego and grew up in Towson, Md. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and received a master's degree in international affairs from George Washington University in 1979 and a doctorate in economics from the University of Maryland in 1993.

She was a commissioner on the Montgomery County Commission on People With Disabilities from 1994 to 1996. She founded the MS support group in Bethesda-Silver Spring at the request of the National Capital Chapter of the MS Society.

For years a dedicated runner, she was training for the Marine Corps Marathon when she noticed a tingling sensation in her feet -- an early sign of MS, which was diagnosed in 1989.

She also enjoyed hiking in the Santa Ynez mountains near Santa Barbara, Calif.

Her marriage to Barry Wise ended in divorce.

Survivors include her husband, Peter Mohr of Silver Spring; a son from her first marriage, Oliver Wise of Oakland, Calif.; two stepchildren, Robert Mohr of Berkeley, Calif., and Tracie Brauer of San Diego; her mother, Joan Watkins of San Diego; a sister; and a granddaughter.