She longed to study at the Athenaeum, a Chicago Museum, and spent her work-day lunch breaks reading a discarded biology book she retrieved from a packing crate. Intrigued by science, she walked several miles to work and saved her unspent car fare to pay college tuition for night classes at the University of Illinois. At her brother's graduation from the university, she met female student role models and longed to be a part of academic life and to increase her knowledge of living things.
Against her family's wishes, Hyde took entrance exams at the University of Illinois. After her brother became ill, she temporarily shelved her plans for higher education and tended him at home. In 1881, on limited savings, she enrolled at the university for one year to study natural history, the basis for a teaching job. While instructing seven- and eight-year-olds for seven years in Chicago public schools, she compiled a system-wide science curriculum.
Prepared for a Career in Laboratory Research
Discontent in the classroom, Hyde completed a B.S. degree in pre-medicine at Cornell University in three years and initiated graduate study at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania under Dr. Jacques Loeb, an expert on physio-chemical processes in animals.
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