The Remarkable Life and Work of Ellen Swallow Richards and Her Role in Shaping Public Health at the Chestnut Hill Water Station and Beyond

Ellen Swallow Richards (1842 – 1911), a pioneer in public health, chemistry, microbiology,
environmental science and engineering, graduated Vassar with a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in 1870 and MIT with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1873. In a period when women were not permitted to obtain PhDs or work with men in their laboratories, she founded the Women’s Laboratory at MIT in 1876. The year after MIT built its first coeducational chemistry laboratory in 1883, she was appointed instructor in sanitary chemistry, a position she held for the next 27 years, the only woman to teach at MIT during those early decades. Her student William T. Sedgwick the biologist who became known as the “Father of Public Health” and of the discipline of environmental engineering, spoke of Ellen Swallow Richards, in his 1911 eulogy, as his “great teacher.” George C. Whipple, MIT graduate in 1889 with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, was a protégé of William Sedgwick. Whipple was the first to establish the water laboratory at Chestnut Hill. Together with Prof. Sedgwick and Prof. Milton Rosenau, they founded the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers in 1911, which later became the Harvard School of Public Health. The talk will cover ESR’s role in shaping the public health at Chestnut Hill Water Station and beyond. The lecturer’s international humanitarian engineering work and that