Ellen Swallow Richards

Who was Ellen Swallow Richards?

Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards was the foremost female industrial and environmental chemist in the United States during the 19th century. Her pioneering work in sanitary engineering and experimental research in domestic science widened professional opportunities for women in the sciences and laid a foundation for the new science of home economics.

Richards graduated from Westford Academy in 1862, and Vassar College in 1870. She was the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she graduated in 1873 and later became its first female instructor. Mrs. Richards was the first woman in America accepted to any school of science and technology, and the first American woman to earn a degree in chemistry, which she earned from Vassar College in 1870.

Richards was a pragmatic feminist, as well as a founding ecofeminist who believed that women's work within the home was a vital aspect of the economy.