Shuping Wang, a Chinese doctor who braved the loss of her job as well as ostracism, assault and the destruction of her first marriage to expose the spread of AIDS in rural China, died on Sept. 21 in Salt Lake City. She was 59.

She died while hiking in a canyon with her husband, Gary Christensen. A preliminary autopsy indicated that the cause was a heart attack, he said. She had lived in Salt Lake City in recent years after settling in the United States.

Her death came just over two weeks after a stage play based on her experience as a whistle-blower opened in London.

Dr. Wang worked for nearly two decades in relative quiet as a medical researcher in her adopted homeland, most recently at the University of Utah. Colleagues, she said, sometimes did not know of her dramatic past.