Safetygoat

Ellen Swallow Richards: The Queen of Clean Water

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

Today is Ada Lovelace day.  It’s a day to highlight amazing women in technology.  I know some good technologists personally, but I want to focus more on the reasons we were able to go to university, to be seen as capable of doing all that we can do now.

“They are so afraid we shall break down, and you know the reputation of the college is at stake, for the question is, can girls get a college degree without injuring their health.”

-Ellen Swallow Richards

My choice for this year is Ellen Swallow Richards (1842-1911), the first woman to be accepted into MIT, a huge (financial and emotional) component to them accepting women undergraduates within the following 10 years, and a highly successful chemist, whose work in sanitation control forever changed the way we measure water quality.

“The Faculty [of Vassar] do not consider it a mere experiment any longer that girls can be educated as well as boys.”

-Ellen Swallow Richards

I love her story.  From a poor family, she worked hard for years to raise enough money to enter college, where she earned her bachelor’s degree.  When she managed to gain admission into MIT, it was recorded that “it being understood that her admission did not establish a precedent for the general admission of females”.   While Ellen wished to earn her doctorate after earning multiple degrees, MIT wouldn’t dream of allowing her to pursue it (luckily, a few years after, her precedent allowed another woman to do so).

She became an active member of many university associations supporting women entering into universities.  She helped to begin the MIT Women’s Laboratory in 1879, where she worked as a teaching assistant without pay, teaching chemical analysis, industrial chemistry, mineralogy, and applied biology.  In 1883 the lab was closed as MIT began to accept women as general students.  HURRAH!

While it doesn’t seem like a big thing now, but Ellen Swallow Richards was also the founder of modern home economics.  She was very interested in efficient home management,  basically designed to allow her to get her domestic duties finished quickly, so she could get back to the science. I like this: in essence, she was working within the confines of society to make careers a little bit more accessible for the average woman.

“I hope that I am winning a way which others will keep open.”

-Ellen Swallow Richards

Thanks to women like Ellen, if I wanted to learn engineering, mathematics, or any university degree I wanted, I could. She was lucky enough to have a husband and colleagues who supported her ambitions for an equal opportunity for women at MIT. She was all about supporting the next generation, to allow a space for them, if they deserved it. She had high expectations of women as academics when most of society treated women like second class citizens.

So, hats off to Ellen Swallow Richards!

If you want to read more about Ellen:

Wikipedia article on Ellen Swallow Richards

MIT archives on Ellen Swallow Richards

Chemical Achievers: Ellen Swallow Richards

ada lovelaceellen swallow richardswomen in science blogging random