(1869-1970) ALLOWED TO OBSERVE LECTURES ON THE CONDITION THAT SHE 'MAKE HERSELF INCONSPICUOUS,' THIS PIONEER IN INDUSTRIAL MEDICINE EVENTUALLY ACHIEVE WIDESPREAD RECOGNITION AS A PROMINENT “MAN OF SCIENCE”.
Alice Hamilton already had a medical degree when she traveled to Germany in 1896, but she was only allowed to observe lectures if she remained inconspicuous to male students. Back in the States, Alice moved to Chicago, where she taught pathology at a women’s college and later became a bacteriologist. Inspired by the work of social reformer Jane Addams, she joined Hull House, a center of progressive thought, committed to helping Chicago’s poor. Alice established medical education classes and a well baby clinic. In 1902, when a Typhoid epidemic struck the city’s immigrant poor, it was Alice Hamilton who noticed a connection between improper sewage disposal and the role of flies in spreading disease. Her studies showing factory workers were exposed to toxic dust and noxious chemicals paved the way for unprecedented worker safety and compensation laws.
Then Harvard noticed her. She became an assistant professor of industrial medicine. But as in Germany, opportunity came with strings. Harvard’s first female faculty member, Alice was denied access to the faculty club, permission to March in commencement processions and yes…football tickets.
Alice Hamilton later served on the League of Nations Health Commission. She received world acclaim for her tireless efforts on behalf of workers and the poor, including a 1944 listing in, “Men of Science”. Harvard never gave her a promotion. She worked for human rights long after her retirement and at the age of 88 remarked, 'For me, the satisfaction is that things are better now, and that I had some part in it.”
Credits: Image is courtesy of The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
For more information, please visit:
http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/hamilton-a.html
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