Ellen Swallow Richards

Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards ( born December 3, 1842 in Dunstable, Massachusetts, USA, † March 30, 1911 in Boston ) was an American chemist and ecologist. She was one of the founders of the " environmental health ", the precursor of modern scientific ecology.

Life

Ellen Swallows parents, Fanny and Peter Swallow, were both teachers, farmers, and also led a small village shop. Ellen did not have much time left for school because they had to participate in the parent companies. Nevertheless, she took from 1859 college courses in mathematics, French and Latin. To earn the money for their education, they gave education and tutoring. Incidentally she used her seriously ill mother. It was not until the age of 25 she had collected the money needed to enroll at the prestigious Vassar College are one of the few educational institutions of the time, took up the women at all. She studied astronomy among others at Maria Mitchell.

1870, she graduated from Vassar College and moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She was the first woman who was studying there. On 4 December 1870 they adopted:

1875 she married the metallurgy professor Robert H. Richards ( 1844-1945 ), who taught at MIT.

After graduating from MIT, Ellen Richards began for the establishment of the Women 's Laboratory, a course for women at MIT, which she ran from 1876 to 1883 itself. You have to understand that women were not admitted until 1883 at MIT for regular studies. Ellen Richards so worried with their commitment to ensure that women, despite this handicap were able to study the natural sciences.

From 1887 to Richards led on behalf of the U.S. health authorities, the laboratory work of a large-scale investigation of the water supply of the United States, which led to the establishment of a degree program for Sanitary engineering at MIT in 1890. As a teacher, Richards taught their students in the analysis of drinking water, waste water and air.

Besides the work Ellen Richards and her husband supported nearly a quarter of a century active young women who were interested in the study of natural sciences.