Ellen Swallow Richards was born in 1842. She graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1873. Unfortunately, they would not give her the Ph.D. she deserved because she was a woman. She did not let this stop her from doing what she loved. Ellen taught in their Chemistry department until she died. She analyzed water and sewage systems for the Massachusetts Board of Health and set statewide quality standards. She also had a reputation for being known as a "preeminent water scientist." Ms.Richards achieved worldwide recognition on her analyses of minerals in the earth.
Richards pioneered environmental and sanitary engineering and is known as "the woman who founded ecology."
She says "the environment that people live in is the environment that they learn to live in, respond to,
and perpetuate. If the environment is good, so be it. But if it is poor, so is the quality of life within it."
She started the Women's Science Laboratory and opened the Sanitary Science Laboratory at
MIT. She also consulted with government and industrial companies.
Ms. Richards also co-founded the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole where oceanography was developed.
Nutritional sciences were encouraged at the New England Kitchen which she started. Ellen Swallow Richards
also started the beginnings of the Pure Food Acts by pushing a public movement to demand safety in food.
