Ellen Swallow Richards: a primeira mulher a ingressar no Instituto de Tecnologia de Massachusetts

Abstract

Having more women in science is essential to promote equal opportunities, in addition to fostering a country's technological and economic development. Thus, it is increasingly necessary to implement public policies that encourage the entry and permanence of women in the fields of science, as well as the use of the history of science as an instrument of encouragement and scientific dissemination. It is in this sense that a more detailed study of the life and career of Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842-1911), a strong activist in the scientific educational encouragement of women, renowned researcher in the study of food and water quality, and founder of fields of scientific knowledge: Human Ecology and Home Economics, with the aim of understanding how the first woman to join the Massachusetts Institute of Technology contributed to nineteenth-century chemistry and to the expansion of women's access to Science. To answer our research questions, we proceeded with a nonconceptual approach to the History of Science, with a bibliographical survey on the importance of rescuing the role of women in the study of science, the life and legacy of Ellen Swallow Richards and her works at MIT. This survey was based on the researcher's own publications, biographies, books and scientific articles. We continued with the documental analysis, in a qualitative way, in the scientist's publications and in her biographies. Books and scientific articles were analyzed based on readings of the materials obtained in order to relate the data to the issues and the goals that guide our research. We conclude that the researcher was successful in expanding scientific knowledge, until then limited to the academic environment, to the heart of the community. Her discussions enabled the insertion of chemical concepts into important issues of human development, such as food, health, economy and their interrelationships with the environment. Through the results obtained in her researches at MIT laboratories, Ellen was considered one of the most influential scientists in the chemical analysis of water in the 19th century. The method of analysis implemented by her led to the establishment of the first standards of water quality and sewage treatment in America, in addition to being used as a model in all laboratories of this type founded later in the country. In the field of mineralogy, her work resulted in the isolation and characterization of two chemical elements, started the nickel industry in Ontario, and contributed to the advancement of research related to silver in Colorado. Finally, Ellen Swallow Richards both contributed to science and demanded efforts to make way for other women in this environment. Her determination and pioneering spirit were essential to generate opportunities for women's access to scientific knowledge, remodeling the US education system.