BiocHEMiCAL Bulletin 



Volume I 



SEPTEMBER, 191 1 



No. I 



NEW \0U 



BOTANIC^ 



QAkOBN 



MRS. ELLEN H. RICHARDS 



MUCH has been said of Mrs. Ellen H. Richards and her ploneer 

 work in Home Economics. I welcome the invitation and 

 the opportunity to express in part the gratitude we owe her on the 

 side of science. A Journal devoted to the science of Biological 

 Chemistry is a particularly fitting place for an expression of such 

 appreciation, for, although Mrs. Richards called herseif a sanitary 

 chemist, and although she belonged to that department in the In- 

 stitute of Technology, the vital Import of her work and the direc- 

 tion of her energies included the application of chemical science to a 

 more complete understanding of life. She has shown to the scien- 

 tific World the inestimable value of a thoroughly trained, efficient 

 woman, who, with a woman's instinct to understand practical 

 situations, had the vigorous mental power which enabled her to put 

 her Ideals into realities. 



Mrs. Richards was born in Dunstable, Massachusetts, in 1842. 

 In 1875 she married Professor Robert H. Richards. She died at 

 her home in Jamaica Plains, on March 30, 191 1. 



Mrs. Richards graduated from Vassar College in 1870 and 

 three years later received the degree of M.A. from that College and 

 of B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the 

 same year she was appointed instructor in sanitary chemistry in the 

 Woman's Laboratory of the Institute, and later was given the chair 

 of Sanitary Chemistry. This she held until her death. 



Mrs. Richards achieved an eminence in science that no other 

 woman of America has attained. Her thoroughness and vigor of 

 mind were unexcelled by any man with whom she worked. She 

 was rugged, alert, direct. Her mind possessed to an extraordinary 

 degree the ability to separate the essential from the unimportant. 



