Life Story: Ellen Swallow Richards (1842-1911)

Ellen Swallow was born in Massachusetts in 1842. Her parents were former teachers who homeschooled their daughter because they did not believe the nearby school offered a strong enough education for girls. When Ellen was a teenager, the family moved to a different town so that Ellen could attend one of the few high schools in the region that accepted women students.

Ellen learned to work hard at a young age. She excelled in math, science, and foreign languages. She also managed accounting and inventory for her parents’ grocery store. After graduation, her family could not afford to send her to college, but Ellen did not let this stop her. She took jobs in nursing, housekeeping, and teaching and saved what she could from her earnings. By the age of twenty-six, she had the $300 needed to enroll at Vassar College.

Although Ellen was drawn to many different kinds of science, she chose to major in chemistry because it had the most practical applications to daily life. This desire to connect scientific research with the real world became a key characteristic of her impressive career.

Ellen graduated from Vassar in 1870 with the goal of obtaining paid work in a chemical lab. She applied to companies across the United States, but none wanted to hire a woman. After turning Ellen down, one lab suggested she apply to continue her studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). MIT did not yet accept women students, but Ellen applied anyway. The admissions board was impressed with Ellen’s education, but they were hesitant to set a precedent of accepting women students. As a compromise, they admitted Ellen as a “special” student. She was not charged tuition nor placed on any official rosters, but in all other respects, she was the first woman student at MIT.

Ellen was often the odd one out at MIT. Her status as a “special student” denied her some of the mentoring opportunities afforded her male counterparts. Very few of her peers accepted her, so she focused on her work. Ellen took every class available to her. The work ethic she developed as a child shaped her approach to her education. Ellen’s excellent work ethic and output proved she deserved a seat at the table.

As a research assistant, Ellen was in charge of a project examining water sewage for the Massachusetts Board of Health. The project earned her an international reputation as an expert in water quality analysis, and her outcomes shaped the state’s new water quality standards. In 1873 Ellen officially graduated from MIT with her second undergraduate degree.

While Ellen was a student, an instructor in the MIT mineralogy department named Robert H. Richards asked her to help translate a German text he needed for his research. The two quickly formed a working and personal relationship. In 1873 Robert proposed to Ellen while they were working side by side in his lab. Ellen waited two years before saying yes. She wanted to be sure their marriage would never stand in the way of her work. Robert and Ellen married in June 1875 and immediately went on honeymoon. They spent the entire trip studying the mines of Nova Scotia. They even brought Robert’s students with them to join in the work. Ellen and Robert never had children. Instead, they dedicated their time to supporting one another’s research.

Ellen tried to earn her Ph.D. at MIT, but accepting a woman as a Ph.D. student was a step too far for the school. Luckily, Robert became the head of the mineralogy department and made enough money to support them both. This allowed Ellen to pursue a career in the sciences without pay for many years. In 1876 she raised enough money to open the Women’s Laboratory at MIT. It was a space where women could conduct in-depth research in chemistry, biology, mineralogy, and other scientific fields. Ellen served as an instructor in the lab. In 1883 MIT finally started officially accepting women students, allowing them to conduct research alongside men. They closed the Women’s Laboratory and offered Ellen a role as an instructor of sanitary chemistry. Sanitary chemistry included the study of air, water, human waste, and sewage in connection with public health and disease. Ellen stayed in this role for the rest of her life.

Ellen was a brilliant and industrious scientist who not only conducted research but also established programs and organizations related to her work. She wrote most of MIT’s curriculum for sanitary chemistry and served as the program’s primary instructor. She contributed to the creation of the Seaside Laboratory, which became the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. She was a vocal supporter of women’s education and helped found an organization that would become the American Association of University Women. She conducted a multi-year study into Massachusetts’s drinking water and studied over 20,000 water samples in the process.

But Ellen was most passionate about the connections between science and the daily labor of housewives. She knew that the more the average woman understood about the principles of sanitation and germs, the more they could do to prevent disease and infection in their homes. Ellen wrote that a good housewife was constantly asking herself what could be better, healthier, cleaner, or more effective in her home. The answers to those questions could often be found in science. Cooking and cleaning were merely practical applications of chemistry. 

Ellen viewed housewives as a critical unpaid labor force. From her perspective, if paid workers received on-the-job training, housewives should receive an education in the science and economics of the home. This led her to become a pioneer in the home economics movement. In 1890 Ellen established The New England Kitchen of Boston, which offered cooking demonstrations, instruction on scientifically sound housekeeping techniques, and nutritional meals for visitors. In 1894 her work was replicated in a demonstration kitchen at the Chicago World’s Fair, where Ellen’s research reached people from all over the world.

Ellen’s work in the field of home economics had a lasting impact. She founded and served as the president of the American Home Economics Association. The organization’s members were effective advocates for improving women’s access to information and formal education opportunities.

In 1910 Ellen received something she wanted but had long been denied. Smith College awarded her an honorary Ph.D. in recognition of her life’s work. Less than a year later, on March 30, 1911, she died of a heart attack. She was still a member of MIT’s faculty and actively conducting research until the day she died.

• home economics: The study of the science and economics of the home, including cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children.
• industrious: Diligent.
• mineralogy: The science of minerals.
• sanitary chemistry: The study of air, water, human waste, and sewage in connection with public health and disease.
• Smith College: A women’s college in Northampton, Massachusetts. 
• Vassar College: A women’s college in Poughkeepsie, New York.
• water quality: The healthiness of water.
• water sewage: Dirty water from toilets, sinks, and other sewer systems.

• Connect this life story to the Course of Instruction from the Agricultural College of Utah. How did the professionalization of housework help to break down barriers between higher education, scientific research, and the domestic sphere?
• To learn more about how advances in science and technology changed life in the American home, see this appliance advertisement from Life magazine.
• Study the impact of higher education on modern women. Read Ellen’s life story in conjunction with the life stories of fellow college graduates Jane Addams and Mary Church Terrell. How did their education shape their careers and personal lives?
• Consider how marriage shaped many women’s lives in this era, and how Ellen Swallow Richards’s marriage broke from tradition. Compare Ellen’s life story with the depiction of domestic life in the advertisement in Life magazine and the suffrage poster “Together for Home and Family”.
• To learn more about the long road to women’s educational equality in the United States, read On the Capabilities of Women, Life Story: Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps, and The First Lady of American Astronomy.
• For more stories of women in STEM, see:
  • The First Lady of American Astronomy 
  • Maria Sibylla Merian

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND MEDICINE; AMERICAN CULTURE; ACTIVISM AND SOCIAL CHANGE