Elisabeth Bing, the natural childbirth pioneer who popularised the Lamaze method in the US, has died at age 100.

Bing, born in a Berlin suburb on July 9, 1914, died at her home in New York, her son Peter said.

In 1949, Bing moved to the US, eventually settling down in New York, where she took a job teaching childbirth classes to expectant mothers at Mt Sinai Hospital.

In 1960, Bing helped founding the American Society for Psychoprophylaxis in Obstetrics, now known as Lamaze International.

During the next two decades, Bing introduced the Lamaze method to the US, giving interviews on television and radio talk shows and speeches about the benefits of natural childbirth and important role expecting parents play in childbirth.

“Prepared childbirth was easy to introduce in a way because the atmosphere was right,” she said.