Ellen Swallow Richards, Pioneering Environmental Chemist, Born (1842)

She was first at many things—first woman admitted to MIT, founder and first president of the American Home Economics Association, first water quality chemist for the state of Massachusetts.  She also was the first person to introduce the word “ecology” and its central concept into the scientific establishment of the United States.

Ellen Henrietta Swallow was born in Massachusetts on December 3, 1842 (died 1911).  Her family was poor, and so Swallow did not attend school as a girl.  Eventually she attended a teaching academy for two years and became a school teacher.  But science and research intrigued her, and she entered Vassar College in 1868, at the age of 26.  She received a degree in two years and then started breaking barriers.

She sought admission to what we call today the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), then an all-male school.  They admitted her on her birthday, 1870, with the understanding that this was not the start of a new policy, but as an experiment to see if women could succeed at a scientific school.  She was, thus, the first female student to attend MIT and the first to attend a science-based university in the U.S.

Ellen Henrietta Swallow in 1864, at age 22.

She handled it just fine, graduating in two years with another bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from Vassar (MIT refused to issue advanced degrees to women for several more years).  She immediately went to work as an unpaid instructor in chemistry—again the first (or perhaps the second) female chemistry teacher in the land.  Within a few years, she raised the funds and the backing to open the Women’s Laboratory at MIT, a mechanism to allow women to study science without being fully admitted into the school, bypassing the men-only admission policy.

During the 1880s she began working on water pollution issues in Massachusetts, again among the early leaders of sanitary chemistry.  Now under her married name of Ellen Richards, she implemented a comprehensive survey of water quality across the state, testing water samples from more than 20,000 sites (some sources say 30,000 or even 40,000)—a first in both scope and organization.  She established a natural baseline for chlorine in water, graduated from coastal to inland locations, to use as a standard for judging the amount of local water contamination.  Her work led to the first Massachusetts statewide water quality standards and the state’s first modern water treatment plant (and, of course, the first of both in the nation).

Richards was committed to the idea that science was useful—essential, really—in organizing normal life so that it was healthy and efficient.  The concept was based in the ideas of ecology, then being developed in Germany.  She introduced both the concept of ecology and the term into English (she first spelled it “oekology”), the first in the country to do so.  Hence, it is appropriate to consider her as one of the founders of the science of ecology.  Her viewpoint that a healthy environment created healthy people and a healthy economy is an early representation of the modern concept of sustainability.

Ellen Richard Swallow, circa 1900 ( Frontispiece from The Life of Ellen H. Richards; by Caroline L. Hunt; 1912).

Richards is remembered today mostly as the founder of the science of home economics, which she termed “euthenics.”  Although her term never caught on (it was too easily confused with eugenics), her principles have remained and grown into the science, teaching and extension of food safety, nutrition, and sanitary practices to the general public.  She co-founded the American Home Economics Association and served as its first president until her death in 1911.

She was always, by example and leadership, an advocate for women in science.  In the year she died, she addressed her fellow alumnae of Vassar, saying:

“We have won our standing, an acknowledged place. Now that we have influence how shall we use it? Woman’s outlook will be different ten years from now. Is she still to be behind in the race? Or from her new standpoint shall she lead? The question is not woman, but ability and women.”

References:

Encyclopedia Britannica.  Ellen Swallow Richards, American chemist.  Available at:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ellen-Swallow-Richards.  Accessed November 28, 2018.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Ellen Swallow Richards:  Biography.  Available at:  https://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/esr/esr-biography.html.  Accessed November 28, 2018.

Science History Institute.  Ellen H. Swallow Richards.  Available at:  https://www.sciencehistory.org/historical-profile/ellen-h-swallow-richards.  Accessed November 28, 2018.

Vassar Encyclopedia.  Ellen Swallow Richards.  Available at:  http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/alumni/ellen-swallow-richards.html.  Accessed November 28, 2018.

This Month in Conservation

February 1
Afobaka Dam and Operation Gwamba (1964)
February 2
Groundhog Day
February 3
Spencer Fullerton Baird, First U.S. Fish Commissioner, Born (1823)
February 3
George Adamson, African Lion Rehabilitator, Born (1906)
February 4
Congress Overrides President Reagan’s Veto of Clean Water Act (1987)
February 5
National Wildlife Federation Created (1936)
February 6
Colin Murdoch, Inventor of the Tranquilizer Gun, Born (1929)
February 7
Karl August Mobius, Ecology Pioneer, Born (1825)
February 8
President Johnson Addresses Congress about Conservation (1965)
February 8
Lisa Perez Jackson, Environmental Leader, Born (1982)
February 9
U.S. Fish Commission Created (1871)
February 10
Frances Moore Lappe, author of Diet for a Small Planet, born (1944)
February 11
International Day of Women and Girls in Science
February 12
Judge Boldt Affirms Native American Fishing Rights (1974)
February 13
Thomas Malthus Born (1766)
February 14
Nature’s Faithful Lovers
February 15
Complete Human Genome Published (2001)
February 16
Kyoto Protocol, Controlling Greenhouse-Gas Emissions, Begins (2005)
February 16
Alvaro Ugalde, Father of Costa Rica’s National Parks, Born (1946)
February 17
Sombath Somphone, Laotian Environmentalist, Born (1952)
February 17
R. A. Fischer, Statistician, Born (1890)
February 18
World Pangolin Day
February 18
Julia Butterfly Hill, Tree-Sitter, Born (1974)
February 19
Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial Established (1962)
February 20
Ansel Adams, Nature Photographer, Born (1902)
February 21
Carolina Parakeet Goes Extinct (1918)
February 22
Nile Day
February 23
Italy’s Largest Inland Oil Spill (2010)
February 24
Joseph Banks, British Botanist, Born (1743)
February 25
First Federal Timber Act Passed (1799)
February 26
Four National Parks Established (1917-1929)
February 27
International Polar Bear Day
February 28
Watson and Crick Discover The Double Helix (1953)
February 29
Nature’s Famous Leapers
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